SUMMARY: invalid shell for root

From: Olafur Osvaldsson (oli@isnet.is)
Date: Mon Oct 05 1998 - 10:41:14 CDT


There were so many replies to my cry for help that it would take many pages of
text to give credit to everyone so I hope you accept this as thanks.

I got a few suggestions to fix this mess I got myself into.

1.
 Hold down Stop+A while booting to get into the ok> prompt
 Boot into Single user mode from cdrom with: boot cdrom -s
 Mount the / as /mnt or something like that and change the /mnt/etc/passwd file

2.
 Boot the install CD and start a terminal and mount the drive and edit the file

3.
 FTP into the machine and download the /etc/passwd, edit it and put it back in
 /etc with FTP

There were many other versions of each method but they all led to the same result
I used method two, not because I liked it most but because it was the first one
that I tried.
The third one wouldn't have worked for me and many others because I don't allow
root to FTP into the machine.

Thank you all that replied,
                                Oli

> Hi,
> I am in deep trouble cause I changed the shell in /etc/passwd for root to an invalid shell and there seems to be no way to change that file without geting in as root, su doesn't work, and therefore I can't boot in single-user mode.
> Any suggestions other than reinstalling?
>
> Oli
>
>

-- 
Olafur Osvaldsson
Internet a Islandi
oli@isnet.is



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