Disable Root Recovery

[James Wilkinson]

Feris Thia wrote:
> I've heard that root access can be recovered if we forget the password
> or something causes authentication failed. How is that done ?

One way of doing it is to use a live CD (e.g. Knoppix) and mounting the
Fedora drives, then resetting the root password. I understand that the
Fedora recovery CD can do this as well. Alternatively, you could just
temporarily install the hard drive in another PC.

Another way is to play with the kernel command line in grub, asking the
kernel to use a shell instead of init.

Obviously, this all needs physical access.

> And if so... I want it to be completely unrecoverable.. How can I do that ?

You would have to have an encrypted root filesystem. Googling suggests
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7743 might be one place to start.

Please note that you will be leaving standard Fedora behind. You will
have to put something like exclude=initscripts in your /etc/yum.conf,
and you will not be able to (easily) upgrade this box from one Fedora
version to another: you will have to repeat the whole process.

Hope this helps,

James.

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