"Best Way" to inhibit halting of workstations

[Brent Chapman]

Mike Raffety <uunet!Central.Sun.COM!sunloop!oconnor!porsche!miker>
writes:
# I like the binary patch to /etc/init, but instead of the custom "sq"
# program, a simpler solution might be to make a hard (or soft) link
# called "sq" (or any other two letter name, to match the space used in
# /etc/init for "sh") to /bin/login, which will do just as effective a
# job of keeping the machine safe.

I'm not sure this is a good idea.  Doesn't /bin/login try to write a
record into /etc/utmp, and so on?  If you're booting single-user, then the
root partition hasn't been fsck'd yet, and if it's hosed, you _don't_ want
to go writing on it before you fsck it.

One thing about 'sq' is that it's fairly simple, and you can pretty much
just stare at it for a while and convince yourself that it does what it's
supposed to, and doesn't do anything unexpected (like write the the root
partition before it's been fsck'd); login, by comparison, is big and
complicated, and there are lots of ways it might go wrong or do something
unexpected in this situation.


-Brent
--
Brent Chapman					Capital Market Technology, Inc.
Computer Operations Manager			1995 University Ave., Suite 390
brent at capmkt.com				Berkeley, CA  94704
{cogsci,lll-tis,uunet}!capmkt!brent		Phone:  415/540-6400