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Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users Big problem: shell entry in /etc/passwd corrupted for user root Post 303042208 by Neo on Thursday 19th of December 2019 01:19:02 AM
Old 12-19-2019
Sometimes when I am working on these kinds of "gotacha" files, I temporarily change the permissions to read:write for all users or change the owner of the file to an "other than root" user, or both. Then, when all is testing and working OK, I change back to how it was (root ownership, only root can modify, etc.)

I have a funny story to tell (someday) about this, regarding temporarily disabling google_authentication on a server, because of problems with an iPhone lightening connector (battery would not charge, port did not work at all) and the many hours of headaches a small mistake caused me (blocked my own root access on a remote server); all of this started with dust in the iPhone charge port and me spraying some contact cleaner into the port, gumming it up ever worse.

Always have one more more backup plans when doing these kinds of "gotcha" file changes. In the case cited above, because I had to restart sshd, even having two other open ssh connections as root into the server did not help!

Of course, all these editorial comments do not help "after the fact" and so it if makes you feel any better, most of us have made similar mistakes at one time or another.
Remember, you can temporarily change permissions and ownership on files when working on these kinds of "whoops, it got me" changes.
This User Gave Thanks to Neo For This Post:
 

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faked(1)						      Debian GNU/Linux manual							  faked(1)

NAME
faked - daemon that remembers fake ownership/permissions of files manipulated by fakeroot processes. SYNOPSIS
faked [--debug] [--foreground] [--cleanup] [--key msg-key] [--load] [--save-file save-file] [--port TCP-port] DESCRIPTION
If a fakeroot process wants to change the ownership of a file, then faked is the process that remembers that new owner. If later the same fakeroot process does a stat() for that filename, then the libfakeroot wrapped stat() call will first ask faked for the fake ownership etc of that file, and then report it. OPTIONS
--debug Print debugging information on stderr. --foreground Don't fork into the background. --cleanup number Cleanup the semaphores. --key key-number Don't allocate a new communication channel, but use channel specified by key. (If the specified channel doesn't exist, it's cre- ated). --save-file save-file Save the environment to save-file on exit. --load Load a previously saved environment from the standard input. --unknown-is-real Use real ownership of previously-unknown files instead of setting them to root:root. --port tcp-port Use TCP port tcp-port. BUGS
None so far. Be warned, though: although I've written quite a few much larger (and smaller) programs, I've never written anything that was as tiny as fakeroot, had as many bugs as fakeroot, and still was as usable as, say, fakeroot version 0.0_3, the first version that could be used to build itself. COPYING
fakeroot is distributed under the GNU General Public License. (GPL 2.0 or greater). AUTHORS
joost witteveen <joostje@debian.org> Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> Timo Savola MANUAL PAGE
mostly by J.H.M. Dassen <jdassen@debian.org> mods/additions by joost and Clint. SEE ALSO
fakeroot(1), dpkg-buildpackage(1), debuild(1) /usr/share/doc/fakeroot/DEBUG Debian Project 17 June 2004 faked(1)
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