On Fri, 15 Nov 2002 01:05:11 +0000, Glyn Kennington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Pigeon wrote: >> If, however, I enter _no_ password, I get: >> : command not found >> ' is not an octal number from 000 to 777 >> : command not found >> : command not found >> >> and a somewhat mangled prompt; then >> whoami >> root >> >> - so I've su'ed to root without entering a password. WHAT? >> >> Wondering about the mangled prompt, I did echo $PS1 | hexdump and got: >> >> 68 5c 5c 3a 5c 77 20 24 0a 0d >> ^^^^^ > >Eek! Sounds messy. A few things to try: > >fsck. There could well be a mangled file there, especially when you shut >the system down without the normal shared libraries. Done that - several times :-) >And the `not an octal number' error suggest broken permissions somewhere. It does, doesn't it? That was Microsoft's fault for their LF/CR line break standard. In order to get my Linux box to boot again I had to manually copy in the files from dists/slink/main/disks-i386/2.1.11.1-1999.09.08/base2_1.tgz. Because I couldn't run tar & gzip, I had to unpack it with WinZip on my Windoze box. This resulted in every text file having LF/CR line breaks in, including /root/.profile, the source of this particular error. >Check that /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow match the descriptions in `man >passwd` and `man shadow` respectively. Hey, thanks for that. It was /etc/shadow: the root password in it was corrupted, though the pigeon password was OK. To fix it, I simply copied /etc/passwd to /etc/shadow. It works now. Cool! Thanks. >But *DON'T* send them here for a second opinion. Interesting. Is this simply to avoid filling the list with junk? Given that people post X / system logs etc. for a second opinion, probably not. Are you assuming that my passwords may not be safe against a brute-force dictionary attack, or has the "one-way" nature of the encryption algorithm been compromised? Thanks again, Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
