Adduser and /etc/passwd

[Mario Vukelic]

On Wed, 2007-08-15 at 10:57 +1000, Lev Lafayette wrote:
> Just worries me that adduser doesn't parse the information
> to /etc/passwd as it should...

You are misunderstanding the option. "man adduser":

--no-create-home Do not create the home directory, even if it doesn’t
exist.

The point of the option is not that the user shall not have a home
directory, but that adduser shouldn't create it (and fill with files
from /etc/skel, and so on), presumably because you have another way to
create it.

That's why it is called --no-create-home and not --no-home.

As Matthew said, you can set the shell to /bin/false, but I find it
neater to repeat what Ubuntu does to disable root logins: Use "!" as the
password in /etc/shadow