Subject: Re: require root passwd for single user mode login?
From: Hollis R Blanchard (hollis+@andrew.cmu.edu)
Date: Tue Aug 29 2000 - 07:50:07 MDT
On Mon, 28 Aug 2000, Michael A. Peters wrote:
>
> Also, the user being able to shutddown or reboot from console is also
> a Red Hat thing. They do it with pam to verify that the user is at
> the console, but that's stupid!
I actually found out the reason for this. The idea is that if they're at
console, they can shut it down anyways. And 'halt' is clearly a better
solution than pulling the plug.
> Just because Macs don't have a good way to prevent booting off
> alternate media (such as CDROM) does not mean its local security
> should be shitty in other areas. Besides, I suspect RS/6000 and other
> platforms linuxppc runs on has better physical security.
I'm sure you know it's a commonly accepted tenet of security that if you
have physical access to the machine you can do whatever you want...
there's no reason to make everything really restrictive if all you have
to do is boot from a CD to circumvent it.
> The user should NOT be able to log in w/o password when booting
> single. Only root has any business being single, therefore the person
> booting single should have the root password.
If you can type "single" at a boot prompt you can just as easily type
"init=/bin/bash". The only way to prevent that is to do some kernel hacking,
cutting off a very useful tool in the process. You can of course do this
locally if it upsets you...
> I highly advise both LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog Linux to stray from Red
> Hat's way when it comes to booting single or allowing users to reboot
> a machine.
I hope you understand the situation better now.
Incidentally, I also discovered why Red Hat creates a group for every user.
There really is a reason...
-Hollis
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