On Thu, 10 Mar 2022 at 21:18:30 +0100, Marc Haber wrote: > I have re-read Simon's words and still have the interpretation that > unlocking an account that has been created with -disabled-login will > allow login without password, making the account completely open.
That's what I thought would happen, but now that I try it, in fact usermod has a guard against this (at least in sid). Steps to reproduce (on a disposable machine): adduser --system --disabled-password disabled-password adduser --system --disabled-login disabled-login adduser --system --disabled-login --disabled-password disabled-both grep disabled /etc/shadow usermod -U disabled-password usermod -U disabled-login usermod -U disabled-both Results: - adduser sets the password column in /etc/shadow to '*' for disabled-password and '!' for the others - usermod -U has no effect on disabled-password - For the other two, usermod -U prints: usermod: unlocking the user's password would result in a passwordless account. You should set a password with usermod -p to unlock this user's password. And while I'm testing this: if I change the system accounts' shells to /bin/bash and set up a ssh authorized key, both '*' and '!' allow ssh login. smcv