Hi,

I wish to temporarily disable a user account instead of deleting it.

Is there a way this can be done from the command line? I have SSH root access to the box.

Any help would be appreciated.


Thanks,


~ John

'passwd -l username', I think, though I haven't done it. *g*

'passwd -u' to let them back.

add a "*" in /etc/shadow instead of the encrypted password
this will prevent them to log in. Of course, save the encrypted password somewhere safe then.

Here is what I've found at Slackware homepage:

Disabling a User

Disabling an account is easy and sometimes preferrable in certain situations. From the passwd(1) man page:

User accounts may be locked and unlocked with the -l and -u flags. The -l option disables an account by changing the password to a value which matches no possible encrypted value. The -u option re-enables an account by changing the password back to its previous value.

Removing a User

Removing a user requires editing a few files and removing some things, but it's really quite simple. These steps a necessary to remove a user from the system:

1. Remove the line in /etc/passwd. As root open the file /etc/passwd and find the line corresponding to the account you are removing and delete it.
2. Remove the user name from /etc/group. You need to remove the username from any groups in the /etc/group file.
3. Remove the line in /etc/shadow. Same process as in step 1.
4. Delete the home directory. As root do an rm -rf on the home directory for the account.
5. Delete the mail spool file. As root you need to delete /var/spool/mail/{USERNAME}.

Another approach to removing a user is by using the userdel command (located in /usr/sbin). You can use it to do all of the above. See the man page for more information.

Adding a User

Slackware Linux makes adding a new user easy. All you have to do is run the /usr/sbin/adduser script. It will present you with a series of questions and then it will complete all of the necessary steps to get the account working.

After the account is setup, you can use the following programs to manage the account:

* /usr/bin/passwd - Changes the password.
* /usr/bin/chfn - Changes the finger information.
* /usr/bin/chsh - Changes the user's login shell.