Subject: Re: Fwd: Shot my foot off with chmod (the smoking gun)
To: Video Mike <mike@cpdist.com>
From: Bryan J. Phillippe \(spamblock\) <bryan-spamtrap4@darkforest.org>
List: port-i386
Date: 10/30/2002 11:54:19
On the formidable day of Oct 30, Video Mike penned:

> I managed to lock all users other than root out of my V1.6 system.
> In the name of Internet security, I used chmod to keep etc, home, and other
> directories and files from being seen from the web. I soon realized that I
> could no longer log in as a regular user (which makes perfect sense if I
> set the permissions that way):

I'm not sure how you invoked chmod to accomplish this (i.e. with "-R" or
otherwise), but is it possible you disabled read or execute permission on
your shared libraries and/or loader?  Check /usr/lib and /usr/libexec.

> I also noted that something writes three commas in the passwd file every
> so often and I have to use vipw to take them out:
>
> mike:$1$V/hz8Imd$BUoFLdHmArP5.5AlqqaDi/:1000:100::0:0:,,,:/home/cdt:/bin/csh

This is the GECOS field; it's normal to have commas in it to delineate
values for Name, Office, Home Phone, etc.  If you use chfn and supply
values, you'll see them appear between the commas.

-bp
--
# bryan_at_darkforest_dot_org
# Software Engineer