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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.