password

[Rakhesh Sasidharan]

On 2/8/07, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-02-08 at 13:05 +0400, Rakhesh Sasidharan wrote:
> > How can one setup a system to ask for the root password to get into
> > single user mode?
>
> Well, you can harden a box, somewhat, against meddlers by setting a BIOS
> admin password, so they can't change BIOS settings without it, and
> ensuring that the PC can only boot from your hard drive.  Also, set a
> GRUB password, so they can't change boot up parameters without it.  I
> tend to add another stanza to grub.conf for booting from a floppy,
> though with a "lock" parameter, so a password is required to do so.
> Unfortunately, our current version of GRUB doesn't let you boot from
> CD-ROMs, nor other devices (that I'm aware of).

Oh ok. I got the impression from Manuel's post earlier that its
possible to have init ask you for a password before dropping you into
single user bash. The BIOS and GRUB methods I was aware of, but from
his explanations (replacing init itself while startup by passing an
argument init=/bin/bash to the kernel while booting) made me think
there was some way of making init ask for a password ...

Didn't know about the "lock" parameter. Interesting info ...

Thanks!