NOLOGIN

Section: System Administration (8)
Updated: November 2019
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NAME

nologin - politely refuse a login

SYNOPSIS

nologin [-V] [-h]

DESCRIPTION

nologin displays a message that an account is not available and exits non-zero. It is intended as a replacement shell field to deny login access to an account.

If the file /etc/nologin.txt exists, nologin displays its contents to the user instead of the default message.

The exit status returned by nologin is always 1.

OPTIONS

-c, --command command
--init-file
-i --interactive
--init-file file
-i, --interactive
-l, --login
--noprofile
--norc
--posix
--rcfile file
-r, --restricted

: These shell command-line options are ignored to avoid nologin error.
-h, --help: Display help text and exit.
-V, --version: Display version information and exit.

NOTES

nologin is a per-account way to disable login (usually used for system accounts like http or ftp). nologin(8) uses /etc/nologin.txt as an optional source for a non-default message, the login access is always refused independently of the file.

pam_nologin(8) PAM module usually prevents all non-root users from logging into the system. pam_nologin(8) functionality is controlled by /var/run/nologin or the /etc/nologin file.

HISTORY

The nologin command appeared in 4.4BSD.

AUTHORS

Karel Zak

AVAILABILITY

The nologin command is part of the util-linux package and is available from Linux Kernel Archive