What does '*' symbol in /etc/passwd means?

[Neil Rickert]

In article <27017 at adm.brl.mil> e910276 at dal1.kaist.ac.kr (KiChang Yang) writes:
>
>I'm much interested in UNIX system.
>Recently, I found this '*' curios symbol in /etc/passwd.
>For example,
>	bin:*:2:1::/bin:/bin/csh
>Could you tell me what this symbol means?

 It doesn't mean anything in particular.  It represents the encrypted password.
It happens that no encrypted password can ever be '*', so this is just one
way of preventing anybody from ever logging in on this account.

 If for some reason I want to suspend a user from logging in, I might just
prefer to put 'SUSPEND' in this field, as another way of preventing logins.


-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert at cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940