Re: When fogetting assigned login name rather than password (and disabling root login)
On 15/03/14 23:38, Tom Furie wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 12:21:27PM +0000, Tom Furie wrote:
>
>> It does seem much more likely that Scott is correct and root
>> logins are only disabled at the graphical login - as Scott says,
>> that is the default configuration - in which case Richard should
>> be able to ctrl-alt-Fn to a virtual console, ctrl-alt-bspace to
>> kill the X server (though I think that's disabled since the last
>> few releases)
"dontzap" disabling Terminate_Server XKB??
That was one thing I ran out of time to try (visitors staying and
yapping in my ear).
Maybe it works if done twice??
There's also the possibility of Alt-Sysrq-K (?)
<snipped>
>
> Having gone back to re-read Richard's original post, he does state
> that he was bringing up an install without GUI. Which poses the
> question "why not just log in as root to get the user name?" unless
> root logins are disabled, which leads us back to how he has a root
> password in that case.
>
> Without further input from Richard we have no way of knowing for
> certain what the exact situation is.
Sound logic, until then we're just speculating.
>
> Cheers, Tom
>
In the spirit of investigation I tried testing a few methods of
disabling root login (there are likely other methods)
Expiring the root password:-
# chage -E 0 root
This prohibits login to a console as root, but...
Booting into single-mode still allows login as root
Editing /etc/passwd:-
!root $TheUsualStuff
Results in:-
"sulogin: cannot open password database"
segfault
Disallows root login even in single user-mode. Probably not a good idea.
Editing /etc/password:-
root $TheUsualStuff :/bin/false
Disallows root login even in single user-mode. "Seems" to work fine,
as long as; you're happy not running as root (just running commands as
root); you have an alternative to rescue mode available (there are at
least two I know of).
Kind regards
Reply to: