The -p flag causes failure entries to be printed in UID order. Entering -u login-name flag will cause the failure record for login-name only to be printed. Entering -t days will cause only the failures more recent than days to be printed. The -t flag overrides the use of -u. The -a flag causes all users to be selected. When used with the -p flag, this option selects all users who have ever had a login failure. It is meaningless with the -r flag.
The -r flag is used to reset the count of login failures. Write access to /usr/adm/faillog is required for this option. Entering -u login-name will cause only the failure count for login-name to be reset.
The -m flag is used to set the maximum number of login failures before the account is disabled. Write access to /usr/adm/faillog is required for this option. Entering -m max will cause all accounts to be disabled after max failed logins occur. This may be modified with -u login-name to limit this function to login-name only. Selecting a max value of 0 has the effect of not placing a limit on the number of failed logins. The maximum failure count should always be 0 for root to prevent a denial of services attack against the system.
Options may be combined in virtually any fashion. Each -p, -r, and -m option will cause immediate execution using any -u or -t modifier.