NOLOGIN(8)

💅 NOLOGIN(8) — the "no bestie, not today" page

ok so this is the manual page for nologin, section 8 of the system administration manuals, and honestly? she's a whole mood. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

nologin — politely refuse a login 🫶

like, she's not mean about it. she just says no.

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

nologin [-V] [-h]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so picture this: nologin displays a message saying an account is not available, and then exits non-zero. that's her whole job. that's the gig. 💅

she's literally intended to be used as a replacement shell field — you drop her in where a shell would go, and boom, that account can't log in anymore. it's giving bouncer at the club. 👑

if the file /etc/nologin.txt exists, nologin displays its contents to the user instead of the default message. so you can write your own little "sorry babe" note. 🌈

the exit status returned by nologin is always 1. no cap. always.

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

okay so this next part is a little unhinged but stay with me — there's a whole pile of shell command-line options that nologin just... ignores, so that you don't get a nologin error. they're listed exactly like this:

• -c, --command command
• --init-file
• -i --interactive
• --init-file file
• -i, --interactive
• -l, --login
• --noprofile
• --norc
• --posix
• --rcfile file
• -r, --restricted

these shell command-line options are ignored to avoid nologin error. she's just being chill about it. 🙈

and then the two options that actually do stuff:

• -h, --help — display help text and exit. the classic. 🫶
• -V, --version — display version and exit. also the classic. ⭐

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🧚 NOTES 🧚

nologin is a per-account way to disable login — usually used for system accounts like http or ftp. so like, one account at a time, very targeted, very intentional. 🎯

nologin uses /etc/nologin.txt as an optional source for a non-default message, but the login access is always refused independently of that file. so even if the file's missing, or weird, or you wrote something cute in it — doesn't matter, still no entry. 🚫

pam_nologin(8) PAM module usually prevents all non-root users from logging into the system. and pam_nologin(8)'s functionality is controlled by /var/run/nologin or the /etc/nologin file. so that one's the "everyone out" vibe, and nologin is the "just you, specifically" vibe. iykyk. 💜

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💀 HISTORY 💀

the nologin command appeared in 4.4BSD. she's been serving no since before most of us were born. icon behavior, fr fr. 👑

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🌺 AUTHORS 🌺

Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com> 🫶

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• login(1)
• passwd(5)
• pam_nologin(8)

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🍓 REPORTING BUGS 🍓

for bug reports, use the issue tracker <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>. they're lovely, they'll listen. 💖

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⭐ AVAILABILITY ⭐

the nologin command is part of the util-linux package, which can be downloaded from the Linux Kernel Archive <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. go get her. 🎀

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okay that's the whole page, mwah 💋 — this was util-linux 2.42.4, dated 2026-09-21, and yes she's still refusing logins in style. periodt. 💅✨