*BSD News Article 71327


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!oleane!jussieu.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!in2p3.fr!swidir.switch.ch!epflnews!circpc5.epfl.ch!beaurat
From: beau rat <beaurat@circpc5.epfl.ch>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Help deleting a user
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 14:09:03 +0200
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960618135333.22608D-100000@circpc5.epfl.ch>
References: <31c5fba8.407993@news.intergate.bc.ca> <31C6BEBC.6383@www.play-hookey.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: circpc5.epfl.ch
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
In-Reply-To: <31C6BEBC.6383@www.play-hookey.com> 

On Tue, 18 Jun 1996, Ken Bigelow wrote:

> Jordon Randall wrote:
> > 
> > I know this is a dumb question, but how do you erase a user?
> 
> If you don't want to recycle that user ID and do want to lock him out 
> forever, use chpass to stuff a nonsense password into his entry, to deny 
> him login access. Since the new password is supposed to be encrypted, 
> there is no way to figure it out.
> 

Even better: just insert an asterisk '*' as the first character of
the password field of that user in the password file, without changing the 
rest.  Use 'vipw', for example.  This '*' marks a non-logable user account.
Advantage: if you ever want to revive the user, delete the '*', and 
everything is the same as before (i.e. the password).  Second advantage:
even if someone knows how to decipher the string from the password field,
or has an extraordinary guessing ability, they still cannot log in.