11-23-2003
root lockout
Hi, I am extremely new to UNIX and was recently promoted to administer the system for a small company. Anyhow, the time came for passwords to change, and I made the huge mistake of entering in the command (as root)
passwd -l
After logging out (oblivious to what would happen next), the root account could no longer be accessed. After researching why, I've discovered that the "-l" command locks out the account. After hours of searching the internet, the most common (and possbily only) solution is
1. boot UNIX into Single-User Mode
2. mount
3. edit passwd file
4. reboot
The only problem is I am so new to UNIX, I don't even know how to boot into Single-User Mode. I've tried typing in the following commands while logged in as a normal user
boot -s OR
init S
The UNIX box returns an error message saying that access is denied to the boot and init commands. I believe these are commands that only a superuser can access, and root was the only superuser on this particular system. To make matters worse, the old system administrator left things in a shamble. I have no boot disk; all I have is what I believe to be possible backups to the software that our company uses. I am running UNIX System V, if that helps.
Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN
sulogin
SULOGIN(8) Linux System Administrator's Manual SULOGIN(8)
NAME
sulogin - Single-user login
SYNOPSIS
sulogin [ -e ] [ -p ] [ -t SECONDS ] [ TTY ]
DESCRIPTION
sulogin is invoked by init(8) when the system goes into single user mode. (This is done through an entry in inittab(5).) Init also tries
to execute sulogin when the boot loader (e.g., grub(8)) passes it the -b option.
The user is prompted
Give root password for system maintenance
(or type Control-D for normal startup):
If the root account is locked, no password prompt is displayed and sulogin behaves as if the correct password were entered.
sulogin will be connected to the current terminal, or to the optional device that can be specified on the command line (typically /dev/con-
sole).
If the -t option is used then the program only waits the given number of seconds for user input.
If the -p option is used then the single-user shell is invoked with a dash as the first character in argv[0]. This causes the shell
process to behave as a login shell. The default is not to do this, so that the shell will not read /etc/profile or $HOME/.profile at
startup.
After the user exits the single-user shell, or presses control-D at the prompt, the system will (continue to) boot to the default runlevel.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
sulogin looks for the environment variable SUSHELL or sushell to determine what shell to start. If the environment variable is not set, it
will try to execute root's shell from /etc/passwd. If that fails it will fall back to /bin/sh.
This is very valuable together with the -b option to init. To boot the system into single user mode, with the root file system mounted
read/write, using a special "fail safe" shell that is statically linked (this example is valid for the LILO bootprompt)
boot: linux -b rw sushell=/sbin/sash
FALLBACK METHODS
sulogin checks the root password using the standard method (getpwnam) first. Then, if the -e option was specified, sulogin examines these
files directly to find the root password:
/etc/passwd,
/etc/shadow (if present)
If they are damaged or nonexistent, sulogin will start a root shell without asking for a password. Only use the -e option if you are sure
the console is physically protected against unauthorized access.
AUTHOR
Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron.nl>
SEE ALSO
init(8), inittab(5).
17 Jan 2006 SULOGIN(8)