Disabling means many things to many people, but in the
context of user management, it should be understood as the act of making a
shell, ftp, and e-mail (POP) account unavailable to the user. (Disabling cron,
Web, and other services that do not require the user to log in is beyond the
scope of this tutorial, but such disablement is an important consideration.)
chpass
This is one of the few times you will use chpass as root to modify a password.
-
The recommended way to disable an existing user is to simply insert an
asterisk at the beginning of the user's password field.
# chpass
#Changing user database information for .
Login: joe
Password: *$1$tmTYmsuQ$IHSy7urpdZwXEzA3iYsnF/
Notice the asterisk (*) at the beginning of the password
hash. This guarantees that no password will match because the asterisk is
outside the range of characters used by the password hashing algorithm.
-
When the time to re-enable the account comes, simply remove the asterisk
(using chpass). If you remove the
asterisk by directly editing /etc/master.passwd,
be sure to run:
pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd
when you finish so your changes update other password
files.
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