nixCraft

How do I lock account on redhat Linux w/o deleting a user account? What modification do I need to make to /etc/passwd file?

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Friends - v-nessa - missyAdmin - LinuxChix

passwd -l <username>

You can do like vi /etc/passwd and find the account that you want to lock it and put plus sign (+) in front of it. Save it and you're good to go. By doing that, the user account tomctl got disable and can't login anymore but his account is still in your machine. If you want to complete remove it, then do userdel -r tomctl. Also, you can do the rbash to restrict that user, too. Tons of things we can manage users in linux.

For example.

+tomctl:102............... /home/tomctl:/bin/bash
This will disable tomctl account.