Faillog in Fedora

First of all, this is just my own experience from an Red Hat magazine named How do I use the faillog program to track failed login attempts?

Let's go:

1. Open the /etc/pam.d/system-auth file for editing.
2. Add the following lines:
   auth required pam_tally.so no_magic_root account required pam_tally.so deny=2 no_magic_root
3. Save the file and exit.
4. Test the configuration by attempting to login as a root, but using a wrong password.
5. Here're my 5 cents: type this: (my output appears in spanish)
   [root@soseck ~]$ faillog -u root User Fails Máx Last Active root 1 0 03/01/07 07:40:02 +0100 pts/0
6. Keep in mind that if your're using the authconfig tool your changes at /etc/pam.d/system-auth will be lossed next time authconfig runs.

More from my own: as a root you should use system-config-suthentication (by typing from a console, for instance) if you want to have a look on how yor system is configured. I recommend you have a look on faillog manual page. It comes with very useful parameters that makes me feel I 'll need a next post to talk about it, such a lock-time that lock an account during a number of seconds after a failed login.