Question regarding /etc/passwd

[Rick Stevens]

On Fri, 2006-08-04 at 09:35 -0700, Waldher, Travis R wrote:
> If in the shell location of an account, a /dev/null entry is placed.
> 
> The account can't login, as there is no shell to login to.  Correct?
> 
> Can scripts, etc. be executed as that account?  If so, how?  I'm
> assuming via su.

Uh, the more proper thing to do is make the shell either /sbin/nologin
or /sbin/noaccess (whichever is appropriate to your system) or the old
standby, /bin/false.  I wouldn't set it to /dev/null.

Note that if the shell No, you can't run anything that needs a shell or
stdin/stdout/stderr.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-          Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.           -
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