UNIX Desktop Questions & Answers

who you can't log in as, but you can su over to them once you get on.

I am aware of how to make a no login user by using /NOSHELL in the spot for the shell in the passwd file, but my question is if I do that and then get on the box as a user who I can log in as and "su -" over to the nologin user when I hit his environment and it reads the variables to set it up will it see that and not let me log in as them or will it work out OK?

I realize if I "su" to them I just get theri permissions, but if I need to also use their environment (ie "su -") then what do I do?

Any help is appreciated, Thanks in advance,
New_Guru

You shouldnt have any problems su'ing over to a nologin user. its up to you whether you want to carry over your profile depending on how you su with or without the "-".

It is fairly straightforward. there shouldnt be any issues.

I thought that may be the case. In my particular situation I am taking a user that already exists and removing the ability to log in as that user. I just wanted to be sure before I did it because the user whos login ability is going away is the owner of a lot of files and software on my system. If I do this and it causes the system to not be able to run things I would be in trouble.
Thanks for the info,
New_Guru

I used the "/NOSHELL" value in the passwd file where the shell variable is supposed to be. When I try to "su" or "su -" over to that user and it says, "su: No shell" and will not let me.

So I will state my question again unless I was not clear before. I need to change an existing user lets call him user #1 (who owns a lot of software and scripts I can not break the usability of) from a user you log onto the system as to a user you cannot log on as anymore. I want to be able to log on as a different user (lets say user #2) and then "su" or "su -" over to the user #1 who I can no longer log on as.

Thanks again in advance,
New_Guru

Try setting the user's shell to /bin/nologin. That should help.

why not give the "nologin" user ksh as the login shell and put code in $HOME/.profile to check for whether $LOGNAME correspond to the "who am i" output? if yes, exit out ... if no, proceed ... (change $LOGNAME and "who am i" as appropriate for your OS) ...

Code:

ME=$(who am i | awk '{print $1}')
if [ "$LOGNAME" = "$ME" ]
then
    echo "Login not allowed"
    exit
fi