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Re: I've hozed my root login.



On Tue, Jul 21, 1998 at 10:24:09AM +0200, E.L. Meijer (Eric) wrote:
> > 
> > As root I ran chsh and accidentally entered an
> > invalid shell path. chsh didn't detect this mistake
> > like it does for a regular user!
> > I wasn't aware of my blunder till next time I tried to 
> > login as root.
> > I tried booting from the rescue floppy and then mounting
> > my linux drive so that I might edit /etc/passwd but the 
> > mount did something weird, when I "cd /mnt/etc" there was
> > nothing there, I mean the dir was  empty, hence I couldn't
> > edit anything. This "emptiness" phenomenon was also true for 
> > other dirs. weird!
> > Any words of wisdom?
> 
> This is way to big an operation to solve this problem.  You can specify
> which shell you want to su:
> 
> su -s /bin/bash
> 
> and you are root again.  Then you can run chsh or simply edit the last
> item of root in /etc/passwd.

Thats good to know...and another tip...
you can also reboot and (assuming you use lilo) give the kernel 
Linux /bin/bash
then you will immediately get a root login...no questions asked :)

this is usefull if you REALLY hose the system....or
if you are not obsessed with your uptime :)

of course now im not obsessed with my uptime...after a few kernel builds...and
power outage last night (I love my UPS)...my uptime is under a day.

-Steve
-- 
/* -- Stephen Carpenter <sjc@delphi.com> --- <sjc@debian.org>------------ */
E-mail "Bumper Stickers":
"A FREE America or a Drug-Free America: You can't have both!"
"honk if you Love Linux"


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