GRUB badly broken during upgrade

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 7:35 AM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I was interested enough to try it on this laptop, and find you're
>> right. Rescue mode can access root without a password, and my little
>> tweak actually makes it harder rather than easier. I'll never give
>> root a password again, because that remembered debacle was my only
>> reason for doing it.
>
> I wasn't trying to convince to change, only pointing out that
> single-user mode works correctly in a default Ubuntu root-locked
> setup!
>
> BTW, I was sent this 2005 bug [1] off-list and there may be others.
> It's not quite related to a default setup since root's unlocked and
> them locked again but...
>
> 1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sysvinit/+bug/18937

That bug is interesting, but not relevant to my experience.  I
reverted to no password, not a present-but-locked root by changing the
entire password field in /etc/shadow to a single '!', as it is when
installed.  I'm not sure why it's '!' instead of '*' like most of the
other system accounts, but it seems to work.

There have been times when sudo did not work well with graphical
things, but there are adequate workarounds like a linux console.  That
being the case, I no longer have reason to break with the Ubuntu way
of doing things.

I've also been told that gksu(1) would help for some things, but I've
never really understood the difference between it and sudo well enough
to know when to use it.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman

programmer, n. an organism that transmutes caffeine into software.