On Thu, 2003-07-03 at 22:43, Nick wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Jul 2003 21:10:12 -0500 (CDT), Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> 
> >On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Nick Boyce wrote:
> >
> >> So in the end I rebooted from the NetBSD installation CD, exited the
> >> installer, mounted my root partition, and edited wscons.conf back to
> >> the default state again ... it was the quickest way out of this silly
> >> mess.
> >
> >The quickest way out would have been to hit "SPACE" when you saw the
> >boot prompt, boot to single user with "boot hd0a:netbsd -s", then run
> >"passwd" from the single-user shell. 
> 
> Ah .. but doesn't single-user mode demand the root password anyway
> (like Linuxen seem to these days) ?   [I'm not at the box to try at
> the moment]

man tty 
read up on secure mode for the tty.

I had some problems before.  In  a comp security course i took once a
friend of my insisted to use secure password by hitting some numbers
from the key pad, as I assured him how silly that was he still did it. 

Anyway in unix any asci code 1-127 can be used in a password, wheather
the kernel maps those correctly to the key strokes is a different
story.  Control characters are generaly good for a password because the
password cracking programs in general dont expect them.

> 
> >If it's up and running, and you
> >don't want to cycle power, you can get the debugger prompt with
> >"CTL-ALT-ESC", type "kill 1", then "c", and again, "passwd" from the
> >single-user shell.
> 
> Ooo ... that sound scary ... what's that doing ?  Killing init ?!?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Nick Boyce
> Bristol, UK
> --
> Spence's Admonition: 
> Never stow away on a kamikaze plane.
>