Daemon Dancing in the Dark

Asking for password in single user

If you boot into single user (by hitting space duing the boot process, while the bar is spinning, then typing:

ok boot -s 

), you are dropped into FreeBSD as root, with all its privileges. This might not be a Good Thing if the system console is in an unsafe spot. You can have FreeBSD ask for a password by editing the /etc/ttys file. Change this line:

console none                            unknown off secure

to this:

console none                            unknown off insecure

Now you'll get asked for the root password before single user mode kicks in. Of course, I'm not sure if there is any sort of workaround now, if you forget your root password. The way to fix that in the past is to change it in single user mode (see this for my note on it). You might have to re-install if you forget it now!

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Posted by jdarnold at 04:50 PM | TrackBack