[geeks] While I'm at it, another Ubunut grouse

[Jonathan Groll]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 06:40:07PM +0200, Jochen Kunz wrote:
>Ubuntu is maybe the worst. I had to fsck(8) the Ubuntu instalation of a
>workmate. He misconfigured NIS and thus disabled his local account. I
>tried a root-login on the local text console, but _all_ root logins are
>disabled. Ubuntu expects you to use sudo(8), but with no valid local
>user account there is no chance to get into the machine. I had to
>powercycle the machine hard and use the "init=/bin/bash" trick...
>Ubuntu suffers from major brain damage.

Did the magic sysrq keys not work? Hard power cycling is usually
unnecessary. 

init=/bin/bash was the correct thing to do if you needed to reset the
root password. The situation above is very similar to forgetting one's
root password and that can occur on any system and is largely a
problem that starts between the keyboard and the chair.

Personally, I quite like Ubuntu (no real need to use it as a server
when you have other, better alternatives, but it does make a good
workstation). It has it's big and little foibles, but then so does
netbsd afterall (it would be really nice to remotely 'dist-upgrade' a
netbsd host).

Regards,
Jonathan