Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 18:12:20 -0500 From: Kruptos <kruptos@netzero.net> To: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Leaving my root behind. Message-ID: <39FF51D4.32D7E5C1@netzero.net>
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Hey all, Just a funny little question. I believe I will answer most of it for myself in this message, I just want to alleviate any doubts I may have. I think this is best for chat. Enjoy my insanity. For some weird reason, which I can't even explain to myself really, I wish to create a new uid0 account on my system. I have already done this. Now, I wish to replace the encrypted password in master.passwd with a '*' to disallow attempts to log into the account named 'root'. Any ideas how this is going to affect normal operations. Please note: I am aware that su explicitly declares 'root' as the user name unless you type one after it. I am considering this an extra benefit to this action. Yeah, I know that a user needs to be in the wheel group to even try to su to a uid0 account (call me paranoid). For now, I wish to retain the entry for root in the passwd file simply to keep the new uid0 login hidden from most ignorant people (aka people who don't know how to 'cat /etc/passwd'). I have learned that when doing an 'ls -l' the first account with the correct uid is displayed as the owner. Thus, if I placed the entry for eris (the new account) before root in the passwd file, it would appear in place of root in a long listing that included files owned by uid0. Now, I am curious as to what would happen if I removed the root entry entirely. Would the system cease to function at all? And/or what other common commands have the user name 'root' hard coded. (I have yet to find an easy and reliable way to search through the entire source tree for the word root. (If you know how to do this, please clue me in, it would be appreciated.)) I don't believe that root is hard coded in single user mode, does any one know about this? I think that the system would remain function without root, but I am too afraid to try. For all I know it could work fine till some error caused by the phase of the moon (much later) throws a monkey wrench into to gears, leaving me with no clue about what is causing the problem. I guess the question I really have is, does the user root have to exist? Why and/or Why not? Just a little question to keep you all on your toes. -Kevin "All men have reason, but not all men are reasonable." Don't open your eyes, you won't like what you see; the devils of truth steal the souls of the free... Don't open your eyes, take it from me -- I have found you can find happiness in slavery... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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