faillog(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CAVEATS | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

FAILLOG(8)             System Management Commands             FAILLOG(8)

NAME         top

       faillog - display faillog records or set login failure limits

SYNOPSIS         top


       faillog [options]

DESCRIPTION         top

       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         top

       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. Only
           absolute paths are supported.

       -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         top

       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         top

       /var/log/faillog
           Failure logging file.

SEE ALSO         top

       login(1), faillog(5).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the shadow-utils (utilities for managing
       accounts and shadow password files) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, send it to
       pkg-shadow-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-15.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

shadow-utils 4.11.1            12/22/2023                     FAILLOG(8)

Pages that refer to this page: faillog(5)