On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 5:44 PM, Roshan George <ros...@arjie.com> wrote: > > I've got a terrible problem. After reading up on `sudo` and looking at > archived emails on [debian-user], I came to the conclusion that a nice > way of having multiple admins on my server is to use `sudo` to give them > powers and then lock the root user. > > Unfortunately, on Debian this leads to a deadly situation. In the event > of a failed fsck, Debian gives you the bog standard, "Enter root > password to continue (or press Ctrl-D)" message. The problem is that the > root user is locked. There is simply no password. `Ctrl-D` just restarts > the OS.
I always profess, not to change the "admin" philosophy of the distribution. I suspect this idea came from Ubuntu wherein the "first" user essentially is the root user except that s/he has to prefix "sudo" > To make it worse, this computer is a VPS running on VMWare, hundreds of > kilometres from me. The set up being fairly unusual, the sysadmins > aren't sure what to do. They can get to the bootloader, but can't mount > the drive elsewhere (limitation of the VMDK format) or do anything of > that sort. Raja's method should help you recover/reset the root password. I have never done it on a remote server or VPS. I disagree, that VMDK cannot be mounted anywhere else. Linux KVM does recognize VMDK v3/4 as well as VBOX VDI disk image formats. With access to the VMWare disk image file (on a local machine), you can use Raja's method to reset the root password. You can also boot a VM with a SystemRescueCD along with the image file and change the root password the brute force way. > Any advice would be appreciated. I'm having that horrible sinking > feeling right now. No worries - just be calm, come up with a strategy and I am sure things will work out. Success of the suggestions will depend on the competency of the VPS providers tech support. Unless this is a production server, if all else fails you can refresh the VPS image I suppose. My two cents. -- Arun Khan A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
