[ubuntu-uk] The need for root in a rescue situation

[Paul Sladen]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Colin Murphy wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-03-24 at 15:11 +0000, Paul Sladen wrote:
> > On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Colin Murphy wrote:
> > > I recently had a corrupt HD on my Dapper desktop system
> > The prompt only occurs if a root password *has been set*.
> BUT - the 'recovery' prompt I referred to is not the one that I would
> choose off the Grub menu, it is a login prompt that was thrown at me
> during my default login which failed.  Are these different?

I'm hoping that you've now got your machine back---which is the first
priority.  'sulogin' (Single-User Login) is the program that would ask for a
password with the username forced to be 'root'.

I'm interested in debugging this either way;  as either it's an issue that
is going to bite people at the worst possible time (when their machine is
down and out for the count), or we can attribute this to a set root
password.

Could you paste the output from the following:

  sudo grep root: /etc/shadow | tr '[0-9]' 0000000000

the 'tr' part of the command will obscur any numbers in the password-hash
---if there is one (somebody eager may to want to run 'John' on the hash!).

	-Paul
-- 
Why do one side of a triangle when you can do all three.   Nottingham, GB