Only tested on RHL 5.2 Intel, but if the last field in /etc/passwd is cleared, then login IS permitted (with bash I think), and the specified home directory is ignored and replace by / Yes, this IS a mis-configuration, but some sysadmins might mistakenly think that this is a viable substitute for /bin/false or /dev/null.
In /etc/passwd, an omitted shell historically means '/bin/sh' (although not all programs get it right). If it gave one a home directory of /, it would be broken, but in a quick test on a RH 5.2 Linux system it doesn't seem to. I don't think that pam should 'fix' this; we have environments that need to share the password file between RedHat and other systems, and those other systems expect the historical behavior for a blank shell field.
The behavior when the shell field is blank is to use the default login shell; hence, this is normal behavior. ------- Email Received From Joshua <jtech.com> 04/13/99 19:19 ------- ------- Email Received From "Michael K. Johnson" <johnsonm> 04/14/99 12:09 -------