Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 20 Oct 2002 22:49:43 +0100
From:      Ceri Davies <setantae@submonkey.net>
To:        Bsd Neophyte <bsdneophyte@yahoo.com>
Cc:        Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>, freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD version of Linux's "passwd -l"
Message-ID:  <20021020214943.GA33135@submonkey.net>
In-Reply-To: <20021020214343.7987.qmail@web20106.mail.yahoo.com>
References:  <Pine.GSO.4.44.0210201104230.18116-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk> <20021020214343.7987.qmail@web20106.mail.yahoo.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, Oct 20, 2002 at 02:43:43PM -0700, Bsd Neophyte wrote:
> --- Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk> wrote: 
> > "man pw lock" doesn't do what you think it does. It displays the man
> > page for pw(8), then the man page for lock(1).
> 
> hmmm... you're right.  thank you. 
> 
> however, i'm still confused about this.
> 
> this is what i found from the lock option in 'pw' after looking again.
> 
> --------
> USER LOCKING
> Pw supports a simple password locking mechanism for users; it works by
> prepending the string `*LOCKED*' to the beginning of the password field
> in master.passwd to prevent successful authentication.
> 
> The lock and unlock commands take a user name or uid of the account to
> lock or unlock, respectively.  The -V, -C, and -q options as described
> above are accepted by these commands.
> ---------
> 
> my confusion lies with the fact that, to me at least, this doesn't seem
> similar to what the "passwd -l" in the fact that the account is still
> availible to root.  they both seem to lock the account... but can someone
> explain how the account is still used by root if it's locked?

I think this just means that root is always allowed to su to a user -
the password check is not done when root su's, so the fact that the password
is set to an impossible value doesn't matter.

Ceri
-- 
you can't see when light's so strong
you can't see when light is gone

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20021020214943.GA33135>