Bug 230650 - /sbin/nologin should not be in /etc/shells
Summary: /sbin/nologin should not be in /etc/shells
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE of bug 70414
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Classification: Red Hat
Component: setup
Version: 4.3
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
: ---
Assignee: Phil Knirsch
QA Contact: David Lawrence
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2007-03-01 22:13 UTC by Jan "Yenya" Kasprzak
Modified: 2015-03-05 01:18 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2007-05-24 13:23:41 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


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Description Jan "Yenya" Kasprzak 2007-03-01 22:13:49 UTC
Description of problem:
The /etc/shells file is often used by various programs to distinguish between
normal users and pseudoaccounts (see the shells(5) manpage for example). Yet the
default /etc/shells (at least in RHEL4 update 3 and Fedora Core 6) contains
/sbin/nologin, a shell dedicated for pseudoaccounts only. I think /etc/shells
should not contain /sbin/nologin as a valid shell, as this goes directly against
the purpose of both /etc/shells and /sbin/nologin. Or (as the worst possible
solution) the manpage of shells(5) should be corrected.

I am keeping the severity at "medium", but I think it might be a security bug,
as some daemons can mishandle pseudoaccount as a normal user account by looking
whether the account has shell which is listed in /etc/shells.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
setup-2.5.37-1.3 (and also setup-2.6.1.1-1.fc6).

Comment 1 Phil Knirsch 2007-03-09 16:07:55 UTC
Reviewing.

Read ya, Phil

Comment 2 Phil Knirsch 2007-05-24 13:23:41 UTC
/sbin/nologin is intentional and was introduced quite some time ago as a RFE
specifically for that purpose to have a valid shell that prevents user login.

See also https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla//show_bug.cgi?id=53963

Thanks,

Read ya, Phil

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 70414 ***


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