SUMMARY: bad root shell

From: root@uranium.indstate.edu
Date: Fri Jul 16 1999 - 15:02:39 CDT


Thanks to all who replied (too numerous to list)

The (almost) unanimous response was boot into single user mode from CD,
mount the root partition under /mnt or /a and edit the password file. (or
copy the backup file over it, probably faster.)

Other suggestions (tried and failed) were to su without the dash,
su -c /bin/sh, copy good shell over bad shell, use sudo (might have worked
if if I would have had any entries in sudoers).

One suggestion was to ftp the file out/in. This would have worked had the
previous admin not installed wuftpd and I had put the new shell in
/etc/shells

So in I guess I am gonna have to make up some excuse to reboot the machine
;)

I am just glad its friday and everybody will be gone in a couple of hours.
  

On Fri, 16 Jul 1999 root@uranium.indstate.edu wrote:

> I did a very dumb thing. I changed the root shell, before testing that
> the shell actually worked. So when I exited the account and tried to get
> back in:
>
> $ su -
> Password:
> ld.so.1: -bash: fatal: libcurses.so.1: open failed: No such file or
> directory
> Killed
> $
>
> I don't have enough permissions to delete the shell, or change it. I have
> the same GID as root, but that is not getting me anywhere. I am looking
> for a command line switch to specify shell, or something do get around
> this error.
>
> Any ideas??
>
>



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