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13.1.1 SunOS 4.1.X
13.1.1.2 Removing users
You can disable a user's login by editing /etc/passwd to change the encrypted password entry, or by removing the user's entire entry. If you're running with NIS you then need to remake the NIS databases before the change will take effect. To temporarily disable a user's login replace the encrypted password field with something between 1 and 12 characters. The normal entry has 13 characters; anything shorter (other than NULL) can't be matched by the login crypt program. To completely lock the user out also change their shell, e.g. to /bin/false, so that it won't be valid. Also make sure that they're not running any background processes, cron processes, or at processes. Enhanced Security mode under Ultrix has a 24 character encrypted password field (2 salt plus 22 encrypted password characters) and allows passwords up to 16 characters.
Unix System Administration - 8 AUG 1996
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