Subject: Making pwd_mkdb statically linked
To: None <netbsd-users@netbsd.org>
From: Marc Baudoin <babafou@babafou.eu.org>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 01/15/1999 21:47:15
[ I posted this one month ago on tech-misc and never saw it on
the list.  In fact, I wonder if tech-misc works at all... ]

A friend of mine just had a bad experience with FreeBSD but it
could happen also with NetBSD.

He's using a fucking French keyboard (yes, we're in France) and
he set the root password with a US layout.  When switching to a
French layout, he couldn't enter the password anymore because he
should have mistyped something.  So he booted on a floppy,
mounted /, edited /etc/master.passwd to remove the password and
he was stuck trying to rebuild /etc/spwd.db and /etc/pwd.db
because pwd_mkdb is a dynamically linked binary (living in
/usr/sbin).  It's easy to copy ld.so to a fake /usr/libexec and
run ldconfig but it's pretty cumbersome.  Wouldn't be easier to
have pwd_mkdb statically linked in /sbin?

-- 
Marc Baudoin   -=-   <babafou@babafou.eu.org>