Booting SunOS 4.0 singlu user (was Re: NFS security)

[John Robert LoVerso]

In article <3168 at emory.uucp> arnold at emory.UUCP (Arnold D. Robbins) writes:
> This feature is straight-forward, and fairly elegant. The file /etc/ttytab
> is in the format of the 4.3BSD /etc/ttys:
> 
> # name	getty				type		status	comments
> #
> console	"/usr/etc/getty std.9600"	sun		on secure
> 
> The 'secure' on the line for the console has the usual meaning of "root
> can log in on this terminal", and is also overloaded to mean "OK, you can
> come up with a single user root shell". If 'secure' is missing, or /etc/ttytab
> is not there, then the system prompts for the root password when booting
> single user.
> 
> This could profitably be incorporated into future BSD releases.

I hope not.  Sun has managed to corrupt "secure".  It originally meant
"it's ok for root to login on this line WITH A PASSWORD in multi-user mode".
Now it additionally means "DON'T prompt for a password when coming up
single user".  Without "secure" on the console, single-user mode will
prompt for a password.

I maintain that allowing a root login on a line in multi-user AT ALL
and allowing a single-user root shell without password are entirely
different things, and at best they ought to use a different flag than
"secure" in the ttys [ttytab] file.

John Robert LoVerso
Encore Computer Corp
encore!loverso, loverso at multimax.arpa, [soon: loverso at Encore.COM]