[Sunhelp] hosed up root login... HELP!

[Dale Ghent]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, ds wrote:

| One of our Admin's just built his new Ultra 5.  After he was done, he
| wanted to change the Root shell to Korn.  In doing so, he changed the
| correct shell name in the passwd file, yet he forgot to change to path
| to the shell.

One thing you should avoid doing is changing the default root shell. It is
/sbin/sh for a specific reason (note: it's not /bin/sh either.) /sbin/sh
is a statically-linked binary, in other words, it doesnt depend on the
dynamic loadable libraries in /usr/lib to be around in order for it to
execute. This means that if a library that is needed by normal dynamically
linked programs is corrupted or otherwise not useable, one can still log
in as root and attempt to remedy the situation

| We tried booting to single user via the CD and still couldn't get in.

This should have worked. He issued the 'boot cdrom -s' command at the
"ok" prompt right? It should have booted from the cdrom to a shell prompt,
and then he would have to mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 and get to the disk's
/etc/passwd that way.

/dale