red-
TX much for your reply...
I am actually familiar with rbash.
The problem with the restricted shell is this - even if the user can't 'cd' out of it - they still can ls /home.
what I'm after here, is to no only protect the data of other users, but their identity as well. I don't want users to know who other users are, or even how many other users there are...
Re: virtualization - I'm not sure how that would help; unless I setup a VM for each user ;-) FWIW: this system is already a VM under vmware-server (free ver.)
TIA for any other ideas/comments