Ubuntu security hole? (not super major, but wondering if it is an issue to report)

[Tony Arnold]

On Tue, 2006-05-09 at 11:25 +0100, Dick Davies wrote:
> On 09/05/06, Chanchao <custom at freenet.de> wrote:
> 
> > Anyway 'obstacles..'  what's wrong with just prompting for a username
> > and password just like gdm does everytime you boot up? Presumably users
> > remember those things. :)
> 
> When fsck has failed, you are pretty screwed. The auth system may need things
> to be up (LDAP for example) that aren't going to be available.

Just to add to this. Authentication at least requires the system to be
able to read /etc/passwd which if the file system it's on cannot be
mounted, then as Dick says, you're screwed! I don't think there is much
choice but to drop the console to a root level prompt so that someone
can fix the system. It's been the behaviour of most Unix/Linux systems
for as long as I can remember.

Regards,
Tony.
-- 
Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
IT Services Division, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
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E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold