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A comment on Linux workstation security checklist. Parent comment

Re:Linux workstation security checklist by mjevans on Friday August 28, 2015 @05:58PM (#10138080)
It's the annoying times when your system forces you in to single user mode for repairs, and you have to enter something... or else boot up a rescue disk (the proper solution) to fix it, that make having a root password at all a sometimes good idea.

Really though, that rescue disk sounds like a better idea every time I think about the situation.

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Re:Linux workstation security checklist by yellowapple on Friday August 28, 2015 @07:58PM (#10138417)
Depending on the breakage (e.g. if your initrd got borked), you'll probably need the rescue disk anyway in order to have access to the necessary tools to activate RAID arrays, decrypt disks, activate LVM VGs, etc.

Even without, IIRC, Ubuntu (one of the few systems that actually gets root passwords right by defaulting to it being randomly-generated garbage that nobody knows) will prompt for the credentials of a sudo-capable user even for single-user mode.

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