Re: [PLUG] Best FTP?

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Sat, Oct 12, 2002 at 12:35:35PM -0400, Bill Jonas wrote:
> Out of curiosity, why not simply create the user account and set the
> shell to /bin/false or something?  (Besides the fact that that's an ugly
> way to do it.)  Or I could be misremembering, and that doesn't really
> work for FTP (but does for POP and such); is that it?

All POSIX-like (and, I think IETF draft standard-compliant) FTP
daemons will refuse to log the user in if they don't have a shell
listed in /etc/shells.

Putting /bin/false (or /sbin/nologin) in /etc/shells is the ugly
hack. And it's a bad idea, since it lets users shoot themselves in
the foot in a way that, ordinarily, is avoided. (POSIX-compliant
chfn(1)s--I recommend npasswd's implementation if you're going to use
a third party's--will only let a user set their shell to those
listed in /etc/shells.)

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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