Bug 212535
Summary: | /etc/passwd disables root account | ||
---|---|---|---|
Product: | [Fedora] Fedora | Reporter: | Till Maas <opensource> |
Component: | setup | Assignee: | Phil Knirsch <pknirsch> |
Status: | CLOSED WONTFIX | QA Contact: | David Lawrence <dkl> |
Severity: | medium | Docs Contact: | |
Priority: | medium | ||
Version: | 6 | CC: | nsoranzo, rvokal, triage |
Target Milestone: | --- | ||
Target Release: | --- | ||
Hardware: | All | ||
OS: | Linux | ||
Whiteboard: | bzcl34nup | ||
Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
Last Closed: | 2008-05-06 16:34:38 UTC | Type: | --- |
Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
Embargoed: |
Description
Till Maas
2006-10-27 09:53:09 UTC
If your local /etc/passwd file has been modified this is the expected and documented behaviour for config files updates which are %config(noreplace). If you think that this is somehow related to something else please let me know. Read ya, Phil The /etc/passwd in setup-2.5.55-1.fc6 looks like: root:*:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash bin:*:1:1:bin:/bin:/sbin/nologin daemon:*:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/sbin/nologin adm:*:3:4:adm:/var/adm:/sbin/nologin [...] For this reason a /etc/passwd.rpmnew is created, with the above contents. (The existing /etc/passwd on most fedora machines differs in two ways, it contains more entries and in the second column is an "x" instead of an "*". The "*" instead of "x" would deactivate the regarding account. I think that noone wants to deactivite a lot of systems accounts on his machine, but it may a security feature, so I do not see any reason, why the /etc/passwd.rpmnew differs in this way. Merging the changes from the new /etc/passwd.rpmnew to the actual /etc/passwd would render the system useless. I do not completly understand whether or not the non-root accounts should be changed to deactivated state, because the meanings of "*" and "x" seem not to be well documented - I cannot find a word about it in the regarding manpages. Nevertheless deactivating the root account seems to be a bad idea. I hope you can understand, what I am trying to say :-) Well, i think i understand what you mean, but the problem still says the same: Neither setup itself nor rpm with it's capabilites can "convert" an old /etc/passwd to a new one. If the file changed on the system the only safe thing in this case that rpm can do is to install the file as a .rpmnew file and leave it to the sysadmin to verify and in case changes need to be made modify the existing original /etc/passwd. Anything else could and probably would in some cases render a machine completely inaccessible after an update, something you want even less than a .rpmnew file i suspect. ;) So in my personal view this is not a bug but an expected and actually good behaviour (not possibly screwing up your system is good imo :) ). Read ya, Phil Or to put it in Bill's words: Changing the default password file makes upgrades a mess, as you have to code in hacks to get changes propagated to users systems. Thats what we're seeing now for updates and we deliberately didn't want to make any hacks to "most of the time" upgrade your system safely. Read ya, Phil I understand why rpm creates a .rpmnew file but I do not understand whether or not there are now changes, that should be made to /etc/passwd, should the "x"s in /etc/passwd now be changed to "*"s or not? (The answer imho is: no, since it makes it impossible to login as root), but if the "x"s should not be changed to "*"s, why are there "*"s in the new /etc/passwd(.rpmnew) file? Fedora apologizes that these issues have not been resolved yet. We're sorry it's taken so long for your bug to be properly triaged and acted on. We appreciate the time you took to report this issue and want to make sure no important bugs slip through the cracks. If you're currently running a version of Fedora Core between 1 and 6, please note that Fedora no longer maintains these releases. We strongly encourage you to upgrade to a current Fedora release. In order to refocus our efforts as a project we are flagging all of the open bugs for releases which are no longer maintained and closing them. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle/EOL If this bug is still open against Fedora Core 1 through 6, thirty days from now, it will be closed 'WONTFIX'. If you can reporduce this bug in the latest Fedora version, please change to the respective version. If you are unable to do this, please add a comment to this bug requesting the change. Thanks for your help, and we apologize again that we haven't handled these issues to this point. The process we are following is outlined here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/F9CleanUp We will be following the process here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping to ensure this doesn't happen again. And if you'd like to join the bug triage team to help make things better, check out http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers This bug is open for a Fedora version that is no longer maintained and will not be fixed by Fedora. Therefore we are closing this bug. If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora please feel free to reopen thus bug against that version. Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed. (In reply to comment #5) > I understand why rpm creates a .rpmnew file but I do not understand whether or > not there are now changes, that should be made to /etc/passwd, should the "x"s > in /etc/passwd now be changed to "*"s or not? (The answer imho is: no, since it > makes it impossible to login as root), but if the "x"s should not be changed to > "*"s, why are there "*"s in the new /etc/passwd(.rpmnew) file? I also would like to know the answer to this (old) question, it's quite strange default. |