Create User with Non-Interactive Shell

Task

The System admin team of xFusionCorp Industries has installed a backup agent tool on all app servers. As per the tool's requirements, they need to create a user with a non-interactive shell.

Therefore, create a user named javed with a non-interactive shell on the App Server 2

Information

Implementation

1. ssh into App Server 2 using as steve : ssh steve@172.16.238.11 . Enter password when prompted. Currently only users steve and ansible exist in this server

   

2. Create user javed with non-interactive shell: sudo adduser -s /sbin/nologin javed . -s is a flag to set the shell for a user. Below I authenticate as root so the sudo prefixes are unnecessary.

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

Learnings

1. Creating a user with a non-default $SHELL. Th nonlogin shell is non-interactive and used for disabling a user account in the case of suspicious activity or upon user workplace/contract termination. The shell can also be updated using usermod -s .

2. A custom message can be set for any attempts to log in as the disabled user account by editing/creating a /etc/nologin.txt file.