Hi, all,
I ran a test where I login a test user several times using the wrong password to see that he gets locked out after several attempts. Now that I got the test user locked out, how do I unlock the test user? I tried passwd -u <test user>, but it says passwd: Error (password not set?).
Thanks,
Jaypas

Try "usermod -U <username>". Check the man pages on both for details, but from the passwd page:

Thanks for the response. I tried usermod -U <test user>, but it is saying that the test user was not found in /etc/passwd. The server that the test user was locked out of is part of a network which is controlled by a directory server. I noticed that the userid of the test user is not in the local /etc/passwd. I'm not familiar yet with how the directory server works. I noticed that there are a bunch of ldap commands. Do you know which one I would use to unlock the test user? BTW, I've already asked the sysad to unlock the test user. I just would like to know how to unlock a user, because I plan to rerun this test again.
Thanks,
Jaypas

Well, LDAP is far different from local files, so it's not surprising that didn't work. You didn't mention LDAP before.

Check out the cpu-ldap tool (http://linux.die.net/man/8/cpu-ldap for the man page, with a link to the software), although it may be depreciated now. You can also use ldappasswd or ldapmodify, because resetting the password should also unlock the account.

Ok, I will try ldappasswd or ldapmodify.