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Policy about contents of /etc/shells



Hello, while purging my bug list on wu-ftpd-academ I found
a bug report with an attached patch.

----------------
Hello,

here is a patch which is necessary to make ftp-only accounts like this
one

skazka:XXXXXXXXXXXXX:UID:ftponly-GID:FTP account for "Lesnayua
skazka":/home/ftp/rented/skazka/./:/etc/ftponly

work with wu-ftpd.  Without the patch, the connection is refused: "bad
shell".  A widespread workaround for this problem is to add
/etc/ftponly to /etc/shells... But doing so is not good, because it
violates the definition of /etc/shells ("the file that lists
interchangeable unrestricted shells").  The patch is below.

Thank you,
-----------------


Now my question:

    * what is the common use for /etc/shells?
    * what is standard (explicitly written somewhere)?
    * what is a login shell (according to shells(5))?

If we assume that /etc/shells contains only valid login shells and if
this file is consulted by chsh(1), then we should have an option to
force chsh(1) to use invalid shells (/bin/false, ....) too.  Since I'd
assume that about the following procedure is used to setup FTP accounts:

    . assume /bin/false is in /etc/shells

    adduser --ingroup ftpguest --home /home/ftp/fred/./ --disabled-password .... fred
    chsh -s /bin/false fred
    passwd fred ....



    Heiko
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