How come /sbin/nologin is in /etc/shells contradicting the man page?

[Matthias Clasen]

On Tue, 2007-05-22 at 14:03 -0400, Daniel J Walsh wrote:

> >   
> I guess a better question would be how to tell the difference between a 
> valid "user" and a "service" on the system.  Currently SELinux checks if 
> uid < 500 (GID_MIN from /etc/login.defs) or a shell from /etc/shells - 
> /sbin/nologin.
> 
> This is used to make sure the labeling of the home directory is done 
> properly.

The same issue has come up in gdm recently, where a database user showed
up in the user list, because it was > 500 and had a "valid shell" (which
was /sbin/nologin). We have changed gdm to not consider nologin a valid
shell even if it is in /etc/shells.

This is all a bit of an undefined mess of traditional behaviours...