my ROOT is DEAD ! What am I going to do ?!

[Jan Isley]

rlw at ttardis.UUCP (Ron Wilson) writes:

>In article <1990Sep18.035609.9248 at chinet.chi.il.us>, floydd at chinet.chi.il.us (Floyd Davidson) writes:
>>In article <1070 at das13.snide.com> dave at das13.snide.com (das13!dave) writes:
>>>In article <245 at geocub.greco-prog.fr>, lath at geocub.greco-prog.fr (Laurent Lathieyre) writes:
>>>> 
>>>> /bin/rootsh is a shell script which make an echo to warn
>>>> that you are super-user and make /bin/ksh
>>>> /bin/rootsh has the following access rights -rwx------ root users

Next time just set your prompt to warn you.

PS1='root # '   or something similar...

And if you make such dangerous experiments owned by bin, you can su bin,
(if you gave bin a password) and fix it... next time.

>>>The shell script is your problem.  If you aren't running 'sh' or 'ksh', whats
>>>going to run your shell script?  What you need is a 'C' program!  Try this

If all you want is a warning that you are root, just changing your prompt
keeps things simpler... I need things simple. :)

>>The default in /etc/password can be set to a shell script, and in some
>>cases it is very handy.  You do not get the services of /etc/profile
>>or a $HOME/.profile, instead you get exactly what you put in the shell
>>script.

Is this a *universal*  *nix_ism?

>It's been my experience that login and su insist on the shell for root be
>/bin/sh

bagend has run on the ksh *exclusively* since about an hour after it came
to life many years ago.  Not all ksh's are created equal, however.  I do
not recall any problem with root and ksh, ever.  Several files in Cnews
definately had some problems with the old ksh, but that was user news,
not root.

Of course none of this addresses the problem of how to get back root
access which was the question.  My mind is slipping, has this been
openly discussed in this group?  How to break into the system?  Very
recently there was a discussion about this in something.admin and of course
half the comments were "why not tell people how to break in" and the other
half were "if you tell I'll burn your computer down".  I don't think it
is in the FAQ file...?  Lenny?  Should it be?	

Well, I am sitting on the fence.  How about a hint?

Boot your Floppy boot disk, (foundation set disk #1?).  Insert the floppy
file system disk (foundation set disk #2) when it asks for it.

When you get a message on the screen warning you of impending doom to
your file system, asking if you want to continue, *** DO NOT TYPE Y ***
If you answer Y|yes, the contents of your hard disk will go away.
Of course, this would solve the problem, ass_u_me ing you have backups.

At this point, if you are not prepared to accept the posibility that
*you* might *really* trash your system because you listened to me,
(not your first mistake!) type N and call someone who knows and offer
them money|beer|land|whatever to come over and help...

If you are willing to accept all the blame if you screw it up, when
the systems prompts you for permission to continue type:

	Del	that is the Shift-Esc key.

You will be presented with a familiar prompt.

If the rest of this exercise is not obvious, email might be a more
appropriate place to discuss it.

jan
-- 
Signatures!?                          | Jan Isley  jan at bagend
We don't need no stinking signatures. | known_universe!gatech!bagend!jan