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Re: Password to single user boot.



On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, Ossama Othman wrote:

: By the way, I don't think I understood what you and David were talking
: about concerning mbr and the master boot record and floppy booting.  Could
: you please elaborate?

Sure.  If you hold down the shift key very soon in the boot cycle,
you'll get a prompt like "1FA:", which is mbr's friendly way of saying
"You, pick Partition 1, Floppy, or Automatic" as the boot process.  (Of
course, this prompt may look a little different depending on how you've
configured your system).  It is the default master boot record installed
by Debian (unless you choose to NOT install a master boot record; most
users do, I imagine), and it will allow someone to boot with a floppy
before LILO even runs, unless the sysadmin has disabled floppy boot in
BIOS.  Not all BIOSes support this option, so it makes sense to consider
mbr's place in a security scheme.

--
Nathan Norman
MidcoNet - 410 South Phillips Avenue - Sioux Falls, SD
mailto:finn@midco.net             http://www.midco.net
finger finn@kepler.midco.net for PGP Key: (0xA33B86E9)



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