Expiring Inactive User Accounts

Question

I want to have some method of determining which user accounts have remained unused for a certain period of time, lock the accounts, and then after a further period, delete the accounts (notifying the user at each step).

These user accounts (in my case) can be used for ssh, ftp, pop3, and webmin/usermin - so any activity of any type should mark the account as active

How can I determine simply which accounts have been unused (for anything) for a certain period of time?

I have written a custom script that parses several logfiles (one for each type of login) every day to determine who has had any activity that day. But I suspect this is not the best way to do this.

Is this the best way to do this, or is there a simpler way (or perhaps a standard utility) to accomplish this?

Answer 1

I have written a script that scans all the relevent logs daily, makes a list of people that have had any activity that day, and maintains database (just a text file) of users and the last time they logged in.

Then I have a second script that examines the database for dates more than x days ago, an notifies the user and administrator 2 weeks prior to locking the account. And if there are any dates more than x+y days ago, deletes the account altogether.

This seems to be working for me - but I would like to use a non-proprietary solution if one is available.