Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 23:44:12 -0700 From: Graeme Tait <graeme@echidna.com> To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu> Cc: J McKitrick <jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: stupid root/toor question... Message-ID: <381A93BC.59BE@echidna.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9910300151510.33874-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu>
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Jason C. Wells wrote: > > On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, J McKitrick wrote: > > >Looks like root IS toor. <embarrassed> > >But why was everyone saying to use a different shell in toor and save sh > >for root in the event of problems? > > Now for the gory details. > > Bash is built with the use of shared libraries. The libraries are in > /usr/lib. Suppose /usr has a problem. You cannot mount /usr. You cannot > use bash. If root tries to use bash but bash will not work, then root > cannot login. Poof, you are locked out. Not so! This might be a problem in other Unixes, but in FreeBSD, you can always boot into single user mode, where sh is the default shell. In fact, without /usr (and such things as getty, named, and inetd), you will have little choice but to run in single user mode. (I'm not sure, but I believe that the system may automatically boot to single user mode if /usr fails fsck.) To manually fsck a damaged /usr, you would likewise have to enter single user mode. -- Graeme Tait - Echidna To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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