UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Ok, so here's my project I've been given and I know very little about this.

I have an AIX unix box that has over 2300 local users.

Any user with 4 or less characters in the username does not get changed.

Any user with 5 or more needs to have the attribute shell=/bin/ksh changed to shell=/bin/true

I have a vague idea how to do this, but everyone on these forums seems pretty helpful and nice, so I thought i'd give it a shot and see what you guys would recommend doing.

Thanks a ton guys!

Something like this perhaps?

Code:

awk -F: -v OFS=: 'length($1)>4 { $7="/bin/true" } 1' /etc/passwd > /tmp/newpasswd

Note that you may affect some system accounts doing this though, such as "nobody", "nuucp", "daemon", so you'll probably want to make it a bit more selective. I'll leave that part as an exercise for you!