LOGIN.ACCESS(5)

🌸 NAME 🌸

okay so login.access(5) — from the File Formats Manual — is literally the login access control table, bestie. It’s the file that says which (user, host) and/or (user, tty) combos get their login accepted and which ones get refused, and the way that it works is honestly iconic. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

/etc/login.access

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

The login.access file specifies (user, host) combinations and/or (user, tty) combinations for which a login will be either accepted or refused.

When someone logs in, login.access is scanned for the first entry that matches the (user, host) combination, or, in case of non-networked logins, the first entry that matches the (user, tty) combination. The permissions field of that table entry determines whether the login will be accepted or refused. fr fr, first match wins.

Each line of the login access control table has three fields separated by a : character:

permission:users:origins

• The first field should be a + (access granted) or - (access denied) character.
• The second field should be a list of one or more login names, group names, or ALL (always matches). Group names must be enclosed in parentheses if the pam module specification for pam_login_access specifies the nodefgroup option. Otherwise, group names will only match if no usernames match.
• The third field should be a list of one or more tty names (for non-networked logins), host names, domain names (begin with .), host addresses, internet network numbers (end with .), ALL (always matches) or LOCAL (matches any string that does not contain a . character). If you run NIS you can use @netgroupname in host or user patterns.

The EXCEPT operator makes it possible to write very compact rules. Obsessed with a compact rule moment. ✨

ngl the group file is searched only when a name does not match that of the logged-in user. Only groups are matched in which users are explicitly listed: the program does not look at a user's primary group id value. 🫶

📁 FILES 📁

• /etc/login.access — login access control table

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

login(1), pam_login_access(8)

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Guido van Rooij

k bye bestie 🫶 this one’s brought to you by Debian, dated January 30, 2020, and it’s LOGIN.ACCESS(5) — mwah 💋