From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Apr 18 22:44:35 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from andrsn.stanford.edu (andrsn.Stanford.EDU [171.66.112.163]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 998A837B405 for ; Thu, 18 Apr 2002 22:44:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost.stanford.edu [127.0.0.1]) by andrsn.stanford.edu (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g3J5gwd19386; Thu, 18 Apr 2002 22:42:58 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 22:42:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson To: Doug Reynolds Cc: Jesse Rock , "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" Subject: Re: emergency password problem In-Reply-To: <20020418222028.9F72248449@wastegate.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Doug Reynolds wrote: > On Thu, 18 Apr 2002 00:22:16 -0700 (PDT), Annelise Anderson wrote: > > >But....you could pop another drive in there, put even a minimal > >FreeBSD installation on it, and then mount the partitions on > >the existing drives, and fix /etc/master.passwd. The problem is > >getting a password database; one way to do it would be to edit it, > >(the version on the old installation), deleting the root password entry; > >(but not the root account); copy it to the new /etc (after having backed > >up the master.passwd on the new installation), and use vipw on the new > >installation to get the password database rebuilt (with all the same > >users but no password for root), copy all the relevant files over the > >ones on the old installation....and reboot the old installation. > > > >Think about those steps--I haven't actualy done this. > > I _think_ that could be possible by using the fixit floppy too couldn't > it? Yes, once you get the hard drive partition mounted. I think you would do it using vipw -d /path/to/hardrive/etc From man vipw: When run without options, vipw will work with the password files in /etc. The -d option may be used to specify an alternative directory to work with. pwd_mkdb has the same option (surprise!) I find the fixit floppy/cd harder to work with than another installation of FreeBSD. A picobsd floppy could also be used, although you might in that case have to call vipw from the hard drive, wherever it's located after you mount the file systems. What I learned from this is that a machine that isn't physically secure isn't secure even if you require a password at the console. Not that that's really news, though. Annelise -- Annelise Anderson Author of: FreeBSD: An Open-Source Operating System for Your PC Available from: BSDmall.com and amazon.com Book Website: http://www.bittreepress.com/FreeBSD/introbook/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message