wjc@ho5cad.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter) (04/22/89)
In article <100455@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> plocher%sally@Sun.COM (John Plocher) writes: > Kids, don't do this at home. >[shows bug that truncates /etc/passwd] > % ls -l /etc/passwd* > -rw-r--r-- 1 root 0 Apr 3 10:44 /etc/passwd > -rw-r--r-- 1 root 439 Apr 3 10:40 /etc/passwd.old > % su > password: xxxxxxx > # cp /etc/passwd.old /etc/passwd No, kidding, "don't do this"!! I was once the last user on a machine and discovered that some clever daemon had truncated /etc/passwd. I thought I'd do just this sort of thing. Hmmm, just how did I expect "su" to verify that I had typed the right passwd? At least under SysV, this was big trouble. Would BSD or SunOS have behaved differently? "Sorry" (meaning, "grab that backup disk of the root file system"). (I tried being root on machines networked to the damaged one; none let me get in and most asked personal questions like "Who are you?") -- -- Bill Carpenter att!ho5cad!wjc or attmail!bill
plocher%sally@Sun.COM (John Plocher) (04/27/89)
+---- In <WJC.89Apr22100003@ho5cad.ho5cad.ATT.COM> Bill Carpenter writes: | +---- In <100455@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> John Plocher writes: | | Kids, don't do this at home. | |[shows bug that truncates /etc/passwd] | | % su <<< This will fail oops <<< | | password: xxxxxxx | | # cp /etc/passwd.old /etc/passwd | +---- | No, kidding, "don't do this"!! I was once the last user on a machine +---- Wow! You wouldn't believe how many people caught that one! That's what happens when I try to condense the interactions of two terminals into one without really thinking ;-( Now back to that full mailbox... -John Plocher