Re: problems with manual page usermod.8 and useradd.8

[Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org>]

On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 10:12:44PM +0100, MarkusHiereth wrote:
> 
> Has anybody an idea about the purpose of such an option?
> 
Hi Markus,

I have seen this used on old UNIX or BSD systems to create a second root
account. For example, the standard default root account is set to use
some old sh or csh implementation. Somebody installs bash (probably in
/usr/local) and wants to be able to log in as root and have that be the
default shell. However it might be dangerous to change root's default
shell, so you create a second account called 'toor' with user ID 0 and
the same home directory as root and set its default shell to
/usr/local/bin/bash (or whatever). Then administrators are able to log
in as 'toor' to get bash as the default shell.

I have never implemented such a scheme myself, I just recall having seen
it on some very old systems I used a long time ago.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez