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Colin,

 > [W]hile changing the shell [I] failed to complete the correct path
 > to bash for root. Now I cannot su.

Some versions of 'su' accept a "-s" parameter which allows you to 
specify the shell. Give that a try and see if it works.

Just to add another story of stupidity...

I was installing everything onto a brand new one-box wonder for a client 
who happened to be using Solaris on Sun hardware (we were pretty much an 
i386/Linux shop). The OS came installed, and we were generally happy 
with the default configs, so we just had to install application software.

I did the same thing you did and hosed root's shell (directly in 
/etc/passwd -- I wasn't even using chsh -- duh!). Before I realized that 
I had done it, I had logged out as root and then tried an 'su'. Without 
a valid shell, it locked me out of the root account. Permanently. On 
Sun/Solaris, there's no "recovery CD" or anything like that. You can 
boot from a CD, but basically only to install the OS from scratch. The 
hardware has some kind of locking so that you can't just hijack the disk 
from a rescue CD or whatever and therefore physically hack the machine.

Our network admin (who knew a lot more about Sun/Solaris than I did) 
took a look at it, gave me that BOFH frown, and said that the only real 
option was to reinstall the OS. Fortunately for me, he did it himself so 
I didn't have to spend several hours installing and configuring it.

-chris

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