Suggestions for removing /etc/passwd entries

From: Paul N. Youngblood <youngbp_at_uahis1.uah.edu>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 15:00:07 -0500 (CDT)

Hello System Admins,

I'm running Tru64 v4.0d and Enhanced (C2) Security.
It's time to clean up my user base (remove old, inactive
accounts). My /etc/passwd file has over 9000 entries.
I want to delete over 5000 specific users from that file
using some sort of automation. I don't want to RETIRE the
users, I actually want to remove them from /etc/passwd.
I know how to do the appropriate "edauth -r USERNAME" stuff,
etc, but I could really use some suggestions on a "safe" way
to operate on this password file.

What do you think about doing the following (Would this
work and be reasonably safe)? ...
Boot to single-user mode, and run a script which makes use
of something like sed to strip out the "bad" guys from
/etc/passwd. Will doing this without vipw cause problems?

I'm looking for a way other than using vipw and deleting
all 5000+ accounts manually. I'll certainly SUMMARIZE.
Thanks for you attention.

Paul Youngblood
Received on Thu Jul 27 2000 - 19:50:58 NZST

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