A bit of a stuff-up
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One of my coworkers was doing some admin work on a Solaris box yesterday. This involved manually editing the password file to change the default shell for root. Unfortunately, he changed the shell to a path that was non-existant. Of course, after that, every time he logged in as root, he gets logged off immediately because the shell doesn't exist. We could log in as other users, but couldn't edit the password file because it's writable by root only. Normally, this would require a clean installation, but in this case we were lucky (??). One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root, and we could change the shell back. This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons :~ :doh:!!
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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One of my coworkers was doing some admin work on a Solaris box yesterday. This involved manually editing the password file to change the default shell for root. Unfortunately, he changed the shell to a path that was non-existant. Of course, after that, every time he logged in as root, he gets logged off immediately because the shell doesn't exist. We could log in as other users, but couldn't edit the password file because it's writable by root only. Normally, this would require a clean installation, but in this case we were lucky (??). One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root, and we could change the shell back. This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons :~ :doh:!!
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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One of my coworkers was doing some admin work on a Solaris box yesterday. This involved manually editing the password file to change the default shell for root. Unfortunately, he changed the shell to a path that was non-existant. Of course, after that, every time he logged in as root, he gets logged off immediately because the shell doesn't exist. We could log in as other users, but couldn't edit the password file because it's writable by root only. Normally, this would require a clean installation, but in this case we were lucky (??). One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root, and we could change the shell back. This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons :~ :doh:!!
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
Ryan Binns wrote: This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons Should it ever be needed again you might be surprised to find how many people in your office have backed it up, put copies under their beds, in the safe... :-D
Look at the world about you and trust to your own convictions. - Ansel Adams
Meg's World - Blog Photography - The product of my passion -
Ryan Binns wrote: This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons Should it ever be needed again you might be surprised to find how many people in your office have backed it up, put copies under their beds, in the safe... :-D
Look at the world about you and trust to your own convictions. - Ansel Adams
Meg's World - Blog Photography - The product of my passionMegan Forbes wrote: Should it ever be needed again you might be surprised to find how many people in your office have backed it up, put copies under their beds, in the safe... Unlikely. It's an isolated network (defense security and stuff...), and nobody else knew it existed, well not that they'll admit anyway ;)
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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Megan Forbes wrote: Should it ever be needed again you might be surprised to find how many people in your office have backed it up, put copies under their beds, in the safe... Unlikely. It's an isolated network (defense security and stuff...), and nobody else knew it existed, well not that they'll admit anyway ;)
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
So you're enjoying it there? :)
Look at the world about you and trust to your own convictions. - Ansel Adams
Meg's World - Blog Photography - The product of my passion -
One of my coworkers was doing some admin work on a Solaris box yesterday. This involved manually editing the password file to change the default shell for root. Unfortunately, he changed the shell to a path that was non-existant. Of course, after that, every time he logged in as root, he gets logged off immediately because the shell doesn't exist. We could log in as other users, but couldn't edit the password file because it's writable by root only. Normally, this would require a clean installation, but in this case we were lucky (??). One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root, and we could change the shell back. This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons :~ :doh:!!
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
Ryan Binns wrote: This involved manually editing the password file to change the default shell for root. Things you learn as a Unix sys admin... A: Don't change root's shell! B: Don't log in as root unless you're installing the OS or in a single user/recovery mode! If you use root too much, things like this happen. And, it's fun for nobody if hundreds or thousands of users are affected by it. :) Jeremy Falcon
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One of my coworkers was doing some admin work on a Solaris box yesterday. This involved manually editing the password file to change the default shell for root. Unfortunately, he changed the shell to a path that was non-existant. Of course, after that, every time he logged in as root, he gets logged off immediately because the shell doesn't exist. We could log in as other users, but couldn't edit the password file because it's writable by root only. Normally, this would require a clean installation, but in this case we were lucky (??). One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root, and we could change the shell back. This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons :~ :doh:!!
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
Ryan Binns wrote: One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root Hmmm, very suspicious character indeed! Dunno what else he might have done! :suss: Nish
Extending MFC Applications with the .NET Framework [NW] (coming soon...) Summer Love and Some more Cricket [NW] (My first novel) Shog's review of SLASMC [NW] This post was made from Trivandrum city, India on a 0.0001 KB/s net connection
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One of my coworkers was doing some admin work on a Solaris box yesterday. This involved manually editing the password file to change the default shell for root. Unfortunately, he changed the shell to a path that was non-existant. Of course, after that, every time he logged in as root, he gets logged off immediately because the shell doesn't exist. We could log in as other users, but couldn't edit the password file because it's writable by root only. Normally, this would require a clean installation, but in this case we were lucky (??). One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root, and we could change the shell back. This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons :~ :doh:!!
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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Ryan Binns wrote: Solaris I'm not familiar with Solaris, but it strikes me as being a rather glaring fault if it will let you change the root to a non-existant path. Shouldn't it give you a warning or something?
It's *nix based.... it doesn't do anything like a "warning". The concept is foreign to it's very being. Regards, Brian Dela :-) http://www.briandela.com[^] IE 6 required.
MFC.NET Application Wizard[^] Mix .NET and MFC easily. -
One of my coworkers was doing some admin work on a Solaris box yesterday. This involved manually editing the password file to change the default shell for root. Unfortunately, he changed the shell to a path that was non-existant. Of course, after that, every time he logged in as root, he gets logged off immediately because the shell doesn't exist. We could log in as other users, but couldn't edit the password file because it's writable by root only. Normally, this would require a clean installation, but in this case we were lucky (??). One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root, and we could change the shell back. This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons :~ :doh:!!
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
No
su?I think it's cool that Shog's coding johnson is longer than everyone elses -- JoeSox 10/8/03
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Ryan Binns wrote: One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root Hmmm, very suspicious character indeed! Dunno what else he might have done! :suss: Nish
Extending MFC Applications with the .NET Framework [NW] (coming soon...) Summer Love and Some more Cricket [NW] (My first novel) Shog's review of SLASMC [NW] This post was made from Trivandrum city, India on a 0.0001 KB/s net connection
He's the sysadmin. There is a reason he wasn't the one doing the changes - why it had to be one of the testing team rather than the admin team, but I can't say what it is ;)
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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No
su?I think it's cool that Shog's coding johnson is longer than everyone elses -- JoeSox 10/8/03
sustarts up the user's shell, so no-go there either.Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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One of my coworkers was doing some admin work on a Solaris box yesterday. This involved manually editing the password file to change the default shell for root. Unfortunately, he changed the shell to a path that was non-existant. Of course, after that, every time he logged in as root, he gets logged off immediately because the shell doesn't exist. We could log in as other users, but couldn't edit the password file because it's writable by root only. Normally, this would require a clean installation, but in this case we were lucky (??). One of the other workers had a setuid script that executed a shell as root, and we could change the shell back. This script saved us this time, but has since been deleted for obvious reasons :~ :doh:!!
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
Couldn't somebody have logged in as a regular user and then used the su command to get root access?:confused: <edit>Looks like Shog already asked this.:-O</edit> Brad Jennings I like pancakes!