nologin(8)

nologin8

Politely refuse a login

Usage

nologin [-V] [-h]

Overview

nologin displays a message that an account is not available and exits non-zero. It is intended as a replacement shell field to deny login access to an account.

If the file /etc/nologin.txt exists, nologin displays its contents to the user instead of the default message.

The exit status returned by nologin is always 1.

Options

-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.

-h, --help

Display help text and exit.

-V, --version

Display version and exit.

Notes

nologin is a per-account way to disable login (usually used for system accounts like http or ftp). nologin uses /etc/nologin.txt as an optional source for a non-default message, the login access is always refused independently of the file.

pam_nologin(8) PAM module usually prevents all non-root users from logging into the system. pam_nologin(8) functionality is controlled by /var/run/nologin or the /etc/nologin file.

Releases

11 releases since Debian 4.0 (Etch); the text changed 10 times.

  1. 4.0
  2. 5.0
  3. 6.0
  4. 7
  5. 8
  6. 9
  7. 10
  8. 11
  9. 12
  10. 13
  11. Arch

--help since Debian 13 (Trixie); --version since Debian 13 (Trixie); -V since Debian 13 (Trixie); -h since Debian 13 (Trixie).

History

The nologin command appeared in 4.4BSD.

Authors

Karel Zak <[email protected]>

Reporting bugs

For bug reports, use the issue tracker <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.

Availability

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

From util-linux 2.42.4-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.