ultrastupid password question

[Tim Wunder]

On 2/11/2004 3:31 PM, I believe that Net Llama! wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Feb 2004, Mike Reinehr wrote:
> 
>>I have a question about the instructions listed in cracking.html:
>>
>>    on either the GRUB or LILO boot line, put: init=/bin/sh
>>    when you have a root prompt, do the following:
>>        mount -n -o remount,rw /
>>        passwd root
>>    (provide new password twice)
>>        mount -n -o remount,ro /
>>        sync;sync;sync
>>    hit the reset switch
>>
>> The instructions call for flushing the filesystem buffers, _after_ remounting
>>the root file system read only. I learned to do this years ago, also, before
>>doing a haltsys, but in this instance, does this really accomplish anything?
>>
>>Wouldn't it make more sense to do this just prior to the remount command, or
>>does mount handle flushing the buffers, too?
> 
> 
> I'm a bit confused by the above instructions myself.  If a filesystem is
> mounted read-only, then there is no data to flush, because it hasn't
> changed on disk.  It would seem to me that the sync calls needs to occur
> _Before_ mounting read-only, not afterwards.

Maybe the remount doesn't really happen 'til the data gets flushed...