Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> wrote:
> Maybe something of the above need to be corrected, I am no expert of how
> shadow passwords work.

You could well be right, but on our old HP's (non-Linux, but System-V
Unix) the "use secure password file" char was *, it was only in Linux
that I first saw the x there.

Anyway, either * or x in the /etc/shadow file will "lock" the account,
making NO login at all possible anymore, and the man page for
passwd(5) gives:
> These days many people run some version of the shadow password suite,
> where /etc/passwd has *'s instead of encrypted passwords, and the
> encrypted passwords are in /etc/shadow which is readable by the
> superuser only.

> Regardless of whether shadow passwords are used, many sysadmins use
> a star in the encrypted password field to make sure that this user
> can not authenticate him- or herself using a password.
> (But see the Notes below.)

So this man page still talks about * in the encrypted password field in
/etc/passwd
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