Re: Root account desactivated

[Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers <bugtraq () planetcobalt net>]

On 2004-03-11 MARTIN M. BĂ©noni wrote:
> I have a really stupid trouble: on a Redhat 9.0, the line matching the root 
> account in the file /etc/passwd has been changed from ".../bin/bash" to 
> ".../sbin/nologin". We have the root password, but when performing a "su" 
> command, the system replies that the account is not currently available.
>
> So the question is: how from an user's account and knowing the root's 
> password but having the root account disabled can we reactivate this root's 
> account?
>
> Any suggestion would be appreciated, I do not want to reinstall the box :(

Get tomsrtbt [1], Knoppix [2] or some other bootable distro. Boot it,
mount your machine's root partition and edit $MOUNTPOINT/etc/passwd to
reset the login shell.

[1] http://www.toms.net/rb/
[2] http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

Regards
Ansgar Wiechers

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