I'm reading some instructions on setting up a user. The user will be called apache (no surprise, it's a web user) but the sample line for /etc/passwd is confusing to me. I don't know what the !! means. I'm used to seeing an x there.

The /etc/passwd line is
apache:!!:48:48:Apache:/home/www-data:/bin/bash

Later this user will be put in a group called www that will get user specifics in /etc/sudoers so that one can
sudo -u apache bash without a password.

There's not much descriptive text that goes along with these directions and I'm having difficulty figuring out what's going on. Can anyone help? ... at least about the !!.

I can't tell what distro the directions are referring to, but it's not Ubuntu, might be Suse or RedHat or Fedora.

Thanks.
-ted

IIRC that means the account has its password disabled - like when you run usermod -L <username>. According to the man page for usermod, it uses a single '!' symbol though...

Thanks. I just looked at the usermod man page and this could be what is meant.

Seems to me though that putting an x in the passwd field and then a * in the passwd field of the corresponding shadow entry would do the same thing ... that is, make it a non-login account.
-ted

If that field is blank, it means that the user can sign in with no password. There is also a setting (I think) that stops the user from logging in at all.

You mention Ubuntu -- are you running it? If not, what distro are you running?

Regardless, you don't have to go through the manual steps of adding a user, and you very likely don't have to go through the process of compiling apache yourself (unless you want to).

Take a look at the "useradd" command and at the "adduser" command. "adduser" is probably the more advanced one and the one you should use. It will take care of everything, so you don't have to manually edit /etc/passwd (and as you can see by reading the man page, you can tell it to set the home dir to something non-default, and to have a disabled login, etc). Then, take a look at how to install a program through your distribution's package manager (On Ubuntu, Synaptic in a GUI or aptitude/apt-get on the command line).

Unless the point for the OP was to learn how to do things manually in case useradd/adduser ceased to function and he had to redo it by hand.

No help here, just saw your sig line, Pixellany. I raise my hand! I STILL have a vacuum tube collection, I rebuild tube type amplifiers and short wave radios. Indeed, the smell of acid core flux wafts the halls over here.

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Tried to send this via PM but apparently don't have permissions... sorry for the wasted space, just really enjoyed seeing your signature, all of it!

"hello, my name is Bob and I'm a windows user... but thank God I've been on the wagon for 9 years now!" (applause, 'atta boy Bob!' heard in the audience)

Nothing but Linux in my environment. Got Slax?

cat

... and I raise my hand WRT the IBM keypunch. The 026 was much noisier than the 029, and had no lower case. If you made a mistake, you punched a new card. Cards were 1000 to the dollar.

Later models had an electronic display of the card's intended content, which prevented many wasted cards.

Those were the days.

Boy, talk about hijacking a thread!

And now to unhijack the thread:

tkubaska, did you get all the info you needed?

Sorry to hijack but private messages and email won't work...

Catworld, please contact me when you get a chance. My AOL IM screen name is 'Mint21'. It's about tubed audio gear. Thanks.

OK back to the thread...

I've never seen '!!' in the pw field of an /etc/passwd file. Might want to run rootkit hunter on that box.

A little Googling reveals that on RedHat(-derived) systems put !! in as the the hash, when an account is created, until a password has been entered.