Change root user name? possible?

[Matthew Seaman]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 08:49:06AM +0930, Tim Aslat wrote:
> In the immortal words of Charles Swiger <cswiger at mac.com>...
> > Whether this gains you much security is another question entirely, and
> > you risk breaking single-user mode and various low-level pieces of 
> > software which expect root to exist, but it can be done.
> 
> I know it can be done, a couple of typos in vipw and I lost the root
> account, very disconcerting, but single use mode still seemed to work,
> probably because the toor account was still intact even though it has a
> password of *.

Actually, single user mode doesn't consult the password file at all --
or anything much in /etc except for /etc/fstab, and even that you can
avoid.  It gives you a superuser login session simply by setting the
UID to 0, which is all that really counts to the lower leves of the
system.

If you think about it, that's a really useful design feature.  It
means you can recover the system even if your /etc directory gets
completely scrambled.  A good measure of the strength of your unix-fu
is how badly trashed a system you can recover without having to
re-install.  You'ld be amazed at what some people have managed to
resurrect.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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