barnett@uunet.uu.net (Bruce Barnett) (12/17/88)
galvin-peter@cs.yale.edu (Peter Baer Galvin): > On "lesser" versions, you can put the command > login root > as the first line of the file /.profile but only if root uses the csh > shell by default. If you value your disk DO NOT DO THIS! I covered this in sunspots v6n24, and in that issue included the program lockup.c that should be executed in /.profile instead of "login root". The problem with the above scheme is if you get a power failure or a crash, the system reboots and then: runs fsck, which fails goes to single user boot executes /.profile executes login root WHEN ROOT DOES NOT LOG IN WITHIN A CERTAIN PERIOD OF TIME, LOGIN TIMES OUT AND EXITS. the single user shell terminates, and the system boots up multi-user WITHOUT FIXING THE DISK! The more your system crashes, the more corrupt your disk becomes. Therefore - do NOT add "login root" to /.profile. -- Bruce G. Barnett <barnett@ge-crd.ARPA> <barnett@steinmetz.ge.com> uunet!steinmetz!barnett
galvin-peter@cs.yale.edu (Peter Baer Galvin) (12/30/88)
I said: > On "lesser" versions, you can put the command > login root > as the first line of the file /.profile but only if root uses the csh > shell by default. Bruce Barnett said: > If you value your disk DO NOT DO THIS! I pointed this out in my original posting, but I guess Bruce decided not to include that in his quote. At any rate, it does have the potential to be a problem. He have 70 sun workstation and 7 servers here and ran in this configuration for 6 months or so without any problems, so I don't think a blanket "dont do this" is appropriate. If your workstation's disk nd partition gets trashed just shut it down and fsck the nd partition from the server. (fsck /dev/ndlX, where X depends on the contents of you nd.local file.) If that doesn't fix the problem you can always use "dd" to copy the contents of another workstations nd partition over the "broken" contents (assuming the nd's are the same size, as they are here). In short you should be aware the risks and evaluate them against the security gain at your site. And I try not to give advice that will cause your disk to be trashed! --Peter Peter Baer Galvin (203)432-1254 Senior Systems Programmer, Yale Univ. C.S. galvin-peter@cs.yale.edu 51 Prospect St, P.O.Box 2158, Yale Station ucbvax!decvax!yale!galvin-peter New Haven, Ct 06457 galvin-peter@yalecs.bitnet