Yannick Perret a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> the only place I found that have the "Give root password" in 
> /sbin/sulogin.
> # strings /sbin/sulogin | grep "Give ro"
> Give root password for maintenance
> which is part of sysvinit-tools package.
>
> 'sulogin' is only called from /etc/rc.sysinit as far as I know (in 
> boot sequence).
>
> Did you try to run /sbin/sulogin on a running machine? It will ask you 
> root password, and it could be interresting to check if it can works 
> outside the boot sequence.
>
I mean (I was not clear): it do works on a SL4 / SL5 machine. It could 
be interresting to see if it does not work for you, in which case it may 
help to track the reason of this behavior.

--
Y.
> Regards,
> -- 
> Y.
>
>
> Yasha Karant a écrit :
>> I have been discussing the failure mode that I have observed:
>>
>> also documented in
>>
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=636628
>>
>> after fsck fails during a (re)boot
>>
>> Give root password for maintenance
>> (or type Control-D to continue):
>>
>> At this stage, at every second key stroke, it reports "Login 
>> incorrect." and
>> repeats the above "Give root password...".
>>
>> as an endless loop.
>>
>> The argument has been presented on this list that it is the root user 
>> failure to configure a password into grub.conf or other bootloading 
>> or initialization applications/routines configuration or input data 
>> files.
>>
>> I have been discussing this issue with a number of experienced 
>> systems persons, and none of us accept this argument, especially as 
>> without special intervention or configuration, the expected behavior 
>> was displayed on EL 4 and 5, as well as several other non-TUV 
>> distributions.  Expected behavior:  whatever root password was 
>> encoded into the /etc/shadow file is used by the routine that handles 
>> "Give root password for maintenance" is accepted, and not at every 
>> second key stroke would it report "Login incorrect."
>>
>> When the system is first installed from physical media such as a 
>> bootable DVD (for EL, this is with every major release, e.g., EL 4, 
>> EL 5, EL 6, etc.), and a root password is required to be set during 
>> installation, this password is put in an encrypted form in the 
>> appropriate file in /etc (e.g., /etc/shadow) and wherever else it 
>> might be required (e.g., in /boot if the particular implementation 
>> were to require this).  Moreover, for fsck to run during the boot 
>> process, even if /boot is on a separate partition from / (root 
>> partition), the fsck executable is on a partition that must have been 
>> mounted, and thus /etc/shadow should be available.  Hence, the 
>> (encrypted) password should be available.
>>
>> The bug is that the password entry routine (as in response to the 
>> prompt "Give root password for maintenance") does not accept the full 
>> vector of characters for the root password including the Enter 
>> keystroke that terminates the vector.
>>
>> As there are correspondents to this list that evidently feel the 
>> above arguments to be incorrect, references to the relevant Linux 
>> source code sections and design documents (e.g., state machine chart 
>> for the sequence that contains "Give root password for maintenance") 
>> greatly would be appreciated.
>>