[Tfug] Ubuntu password

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 02:24:43PM -0700, Matthew T. Eskes wrote:
>   Just boot into single user and delete /etc/passwd

I've not tried it, but isn't this a monumentally bad idea?

/etc/passwd doesn't store a user's password, but rather the details of the
account itself.  It also defines all system users on the machine as well.
Passwords are stored in /etc/shadow, but I don't think you should delete that
either.  If you delete /etc/passwd there won't be any record of your user
account (uid, name, shell) thus making the entries in /etc/shadow and
/etc/group meaningless.

Unless Ubuntu has some sort of fallback boot check for this sort of thing?


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