[MAN] faillog

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FAILLOG

Section: File Formats and Conversions (5)
Updated: 03/14/2022
Index Return to Main Contents

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NAME

faillog - login failure logging file  

DESCRIPTION

/var/log/faillog maintains a count of login failures and the limits for each account.

The file contains fixed length records, indexed by numerical UID. Each record contains the count of login failures since the last successful login; the maximum number of failures before the account is disabled; the line on which the last login failure occurred; the date of the last login failure; and the duration (in seconds) during which the account will be locked after a failure.

The structure of the file is:

struct  faillog {
        short   fail_cnt;
        short   fail_max;
        char    fail_line[12];
        time_t  fail_time;
        long    fail_locktime;
};

 

FILES

/var/log/faillog

Failure logging file.

 

SEE ALSO

faillog(8)

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Index

NAME

DESCRIPTION

FILES

SEE ALSO

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FAILLOG

Section: System Management Commands (8)
Updated: 03/14/2022
Index Return to Main Contents

---

 

NAME

faillog - display faillog records or set login failure limits  

SYNOPSIS

faillog [options]

 

DESCRIPTION

faillog

displays the contents of the failure log database (/var/log/faillog). It can also set the failure counters and limits. When faillog is run without arguments, it only displays the faillog records of the users who had a login failure.  

OPTIONS

The options which apply to the faillog command are:

-a, --all

Display (or act on) faillog records for all users having an entry in the faillog database.

The range of users can be restricted with the -u option.

In display mode, this is still restricted to existing users but forces the display of the faillog entries even if they are empty.

With the -l, -m, -r, -t options, the users' records are changed, even if the user does not exist on the system. This is useful to reset records of users that have been deleted or to set a policy in advance for a range of users.

-h, --help

Display help message and exit.

-l, --lock-secs SEC

Lock account for SEC seconds after failed login.

Write access to /var/log/faillog is required for this option.

-m, --maximum MAX

Set the maximum number of login failures after the account is disabled to MAX.

Selecting a MAX value of 0 has the effect of not placing a limit on the number of failed logins.

The maximum failure count should always be 0 for root to prevent a denial of services attack against the system.

Write access to /var/log/faillog is required for this option.

-r, --reset

Reset the counters of login failures.

Write access to /var/log/faillog is required for this option.

-R, --root CHROOT_DIR

Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory.

-t, --time DAYS

Display faillog records more recent than DAYS.

-u, --user LOGIN|RANGE

Display faillog record or maintains failure counters and limits (if used with -l, -m or -r options) only for the specified user(s).

The users can be specified by a login name, a numerical user ID, or a RANGE of users. This RANGE of users can be specified with a min and max values (UID_MIN-UID_MAX), a max value (-UID_MAX), or a min value (UID_MIN-).

When none of the -l, -m, or -r options are used, faillog displays the faillog record of the specified user(s).  

CAVEATS

faillog only prints out users with no successful login since the last failure. To print out a user who has had a successful login since their last failure, you must explicitly request the user with the -u flag, or print out all users with the -a flag.  

FILES

/var/log/faillog

Failure logging file.

 

SEE ALSO

login(1), faillog(5).

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Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

CAVEATS

FILES

SEE ALSO

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This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 04:46:02 GMT, September 16, 2022