no_login doesn't show the behaviour I would expect: 1. rsh , rlogin and login: Even though the user is not allowed to login, he is requested to enter his password again and again, until a new login prompt appears that finally can be aborted with <Ctrl-D> 2. ssh The text of the file /etc/nologin is not displayed on the terminal, and the user sees only that he is not permitted to login. Here again the user is asked to enter the password 3 times before he gets the message "Unable to find an authentication method", and ssh returns. The configuration file is that of the OpenSSH 2.3.0p1 distribution. that is installed. PAM is at version 0.72. Did I miss something? Willy