[28055] in Hotline Meeting
Root deleted from /etc/passwd
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tom Herring)
Thu Apr 27 09:30:01 1995
From: Tom Herring <tah@mtglas.mit.edu>
To: hotline@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 95 9:30:23 EDT
Cc: tah@mtglas.mit.edu
I am the EAPS cluster manager and have been restricting
login's to our cluster becuase of extreme overloads. While
deleting lines from the /etc/passwd and /etc/passwd.local
files for those students who should not have been denied
access, I accidentially deleted the root entry.
The machine is mercury.mit.edu and is located in 54-311.
It is a Decstation 5300. I can login as myself from the
console, but can not remotely connect to the machine.
I can not cleanly shut the system down because I can't
execute shutdown. Re-cycling the power, did not fix the
problem (i.e., on reboot the OS does not seem to realize that
root is missing and does not do anything to correct the
problem.
So in short HELP!
Tom Herring
