[X-Unix] Disable user accounts?

[cheryl schneider]

On May 21, 2005, at 11:59 AM, John Harrold wrote:

> Sometime in May Eric F Crist assaulted the keyboard and produced:
> | I was curious about disabling user accounts.  On every other *nix
> | system I administer, I use pw to set the lock attribute, or on
> | systems without pw, I add a * to the user password field.   
> Obviously,
> | vipw doesn't really apply to Mac OS X, as user accounts aren't kept
> | in the /etc/master.passwd file.

You can edit  /etc/master.passwd file. You also have to configure  
Directory Access to enable the 'BSD Flat File and NIS' plugin and to  
include the local search path to the config. Disable other  
authentication search paths. Otherwise, OS X won't look for them.

One caveat, the password in /etc/master.passwd is stored in crypt  
form, not shadow hash, so it's less secure. Another thing is NetInfo  
doesn't consult /etc/master.passwd making it is possible to assign  
the same uid to different accounts.


> If you just want to disable the user and not delete them, you can  
> probably
> find something in Applications-->Utilities-->Netinfo Manager. You  
> can try
> changing their shell to /urs/bin/false.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>                             | /"\
>  john harrold               | \ / ASCII ribbon campaign
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Cheryl

--------------------------------
Cheryl Schneider
The Mac Works, Inc.
ACSA, ACN, ACT, APP