What is "-l" option do to the passwd command?

Question

I have seen people use passwd -l "$USERNAME" ,

But the linux man page does not explain what the -l option is for. What does it do ?

Really? My copy of the man page for passwd does document -l. — Celada, Mar 20 '15 at 06:02
But can you explain what the above does ? Does it just set the username as blank? — Kaizer Sozay, Mar 20 '15 at 06:04
Now if I knew what it did, I wouldn't have asked the question. If I had asked "How do I Disable a user's login without disabling the account ?" then it would be a duplicate. I was trying to figure out what someone is trying to do with the -l option. — Kaizer Sozay, Mar 20 '15 at 06:06
Uh... They're trying to "lock the password of the named account", exactly as documented. No?? It sounds like maybe what you want to know is how the -l option is implemented internally. But that's not what you asked. — Celada, Mar 20 '15 at 06:10

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

3

I got this by issuing the passwd command at the CLI

-l, --lock                    lock the password of the named account

It locks the account so that root has to unlock the account before this person can log-in and use the account again.

EDIT As it was indicated this is a duplicate of this

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

Community

1

answered Mar 20 '15 at 06:04

Dylan

1,038

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '15 at 06:12

The -l switch for passwd locks the user account by changing the password to a value which matches no possible encrypted value. Only root has access to passwd -l.

Note that passwd -l does not keep the user from gaining access through other means such as authentication tokens (like SSH keys).

To lock access to a user account:

passwd -l  username

To unlock an account again:

passwd -u username

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

It is documented:

$ man passwd
...
       -l, --lock
           Lock the password of the named account. This option disables a
           password by changing it to a value which matches no possible
           encrypted value (it adds a ´!´ at the beginning of the password).
...
shadow-utils 4.1.5.1              07/26/2013                         PASSWD(1)

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/55115/2594

What is "-l" option do to the passwd command?

3 Answers3