Re: LSB specification of runlevels
On Thursday 05 July 2001 2:17 pm, Michael Stone wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 10:19:04AM -0400, cfm@maine.com wrote:
> > I'm confused about the need for a server admin to boot a machine to
> > all sorts of run levels. Last time I booted a **server** to other
> > than the default was init=/bin/sh because of the pam thing. And
> > that was only a development server. Not that init=/bin/sh really
> > qualifies as a runlevel. Before that the last time I wrestled with
> > runlevels was
>
> That was totally unnecessary. Booting to single user (which is a
> runlevel) would have been sufficient.
No, it wasn't. By default single user (runlevel 1) requires the root
password before you are dropped to a shell. It is a security
precaution which makes it harder for an attacker with physical access
to do bad things.
For those who have not changed this default behaviour (I for one have
absolutely no idea how to go about changing this behaviour, and since I
think it is sensible behaviour I am not going to start trying to find
out either) had to recover by using init=/bin/sh. I had to talk a few
people through this process on IRC at the time.
--
Stephen Stafford
GPG public key on request
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