Asking for root passwd when booting single use

[Bruce Barnett]

galvin-peter at cs.yale.edu (Peter Baer Galvin):
>	On "lesser" versions, you can put the command
>		login root
>	as the first line of the file /.profile but only if root uses the csh
>	shell by default. 

If you value your disk DO NOT DO THIS!

I covered this in sunspots v6n24, and in that issue included the program
lockup.c that should be executed in  /.profile instead of "login root".

The problem with the above scheme is if you get a power failure or a
crash, the system reboots and then:

	runs fsck, which fails
	goes to single user boot
	executes /.profile
	executes login root
	WHEN ROOT DOES NOT LOG IN WITHIN A CERTAIN PERIOD OF TIME,
		LOGIN TIMES OUT AND EXITS.
	the single user shell terminates, and the system boots up
		multi-user WITHOUT FIXING THE DISK!

The more your system crashes, the more corrupt your disk becomes.

Therefore - do NOT add "login root" to /.profile.
--
Bruce G. Barnett  <barnett at ge-crd.ARPA> <barnett at steinmetz.ge.com>
		uunet!steinmetz!barnett