nologin

Set a user's login shell to nologin to prevent the user from logging in

$ chsh -s [user] nologin

Customize message for users with the login shell of nologin

$ echo "[declined_login_message]" > /etc/nologin.txt

nologin [-V] [-h]

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.

-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.

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.

The nologin command appeared in 4.4BSD.

Karel Zak

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

login(1), passwd(5), pam_nologin(8)