lshell is a shell coded in Python, that lets you restrict a user's environment to limited sets of commands, choose to enable/disable any command over SSH (e.g. SCP, SFTP, rsync, etc.), log user's commands, implement timing restriction, and more.

Note: all the following information (and more) can be found in the manpage - man -l man/lshell.1 or man lshell)

1. Install from source
        # on Linux:
        python setup.py install --no-compile --install-scripts=/usr/bin/
        # on *BSD:
        python setup.py install --no-compile --install-data=/usr/{pkg,local}/
2. On Debian (or derivatives)
        apt-get install lshell
3.  On RHEL (or derivatives)
        yum install lshell
        dnf install lshell for Fedora and future versions of RHEL

lshell.conf presents a template configuration file. See etc/lshell.conf or man file for more information.

A [default] profile is available for all users using lshell. Nevertheless, you can create a [username] section or a [grp:groupname] section to customize users' preferences.

Order of priority when loading preferences is the following:

1. User configuration
2. Group configuration
3. Default configuration

The primary goal of lshell, is to be able to create shell accounts with ssh access and restrict their environment to a couple a needed commands and path.

For example User 'foo' and user 'bar' both belong to the 'users' UNIX group:

• User 'foo': - must be able to access /usr and /var but not /usr/local - user all command in their PATH but 'su' - has a warning counter set to 5 - has their home path set to '/home/users'

• User 'bar': - must be able to access /etc and /usr but not /usr/local - is allowed default commands plus 'ping' minus 'ls' - strictness is set to 1 (meaning he is not allowed to type an unknown command)

In this case, my configuration file will look something like this:

# CONFIGURATION START
[global]
logpath         : /var/log/lshell/
loglevel        : 2

[default]
allowed         : ['ls','pwd']
forbidden       : [';', '&', '|'] 
warning_counter : 2
timer           : 0
path            : ['/etc', '/usr']
env_path        : ':/sbin:/usr/foo'
scp             : 1 # or 0
sftp            : 1 # or 0
overssh         : ['rsync','ls']
aliases         : {'ls':'ls --color=auto','ll':'ls -l'}

[grp:users]
warning_counter : 5
overssh         : - ['ls']

[foo]
allowed         : 'all' - ['su']
path            : ['/var', '/usr'] - ['/usr/local']
home_path       : '/home/users'

[bar]
allowed         : + ['ping'] - ['ls'] 
path            : - ['/usr/local']
strict          : 1
scpforce        : '/home/bar/uploads/'
# CONFIGURATION END

To launch lshell, just execute lshell specifying the location of your configuration file:

lshell --config /path/to/configuration/file

In order to log a user, you will have to add them to the lshell group:

usermod -aG lshell username

In order to configure a user account to use lshell by default, you must:

chsh -s /usr/bin/lshell user_name

(You might need to insure that lshell is listed in /etc/shells)

After this, whichever method is used by the user to log into their account, they will end up using the limited shell you configured for them!

If you want to contribute to this project, please do not hesitate. Open an issue and, if possible, send a pull request.

Please use github for all requests: https://github.com/ghantoos/lshell/issues

Cheers