On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, neil wa4chq wrote:
> Greetings all--
> This is for the Linux crowd. Have Redhat 7.0 and got it working without
> much of a problem...
Possibly one of the worst choices you could have made.
RH 7.0 shipped with compiler problems among other things.
(Mandrake 8.0 has lots of problems too... you should
never go with a x.0 version unless you enjoy bugswatting).
Compare the number of security advisories for RH 7.0 to that of
RH 7.1, for instance:
http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/rh7-errata-security.html
http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/rh71-errata-security.html
I'd recommend RH 6.2, a little on the smaller side, VERY
stable, yet modern enough to run pretty much everything,
OR go at least with RH 7.1 or wait for RH 7.2... any
week now. If you have lots of space and don't mind
a more bloated distribution, Mandrake 7.2 would probably
be all right too, though I must confess my dalliance
with Mandrake 7.1 wasn't too impressive.
> My problem is that some how my root password no longer works!
Try 'su' and see if you can access root that way.
Some security programs don't allow direct root logins
under the theory that it's easier to crack a single
root password than it is to crack both a user password
AND the root password.
> How can that happen when I wasn't even root at the time when it
> somehow went missing?
Maybe someone else was root? This would be a
possibility if someone had physical access to your
machine, or access via the net.
Or less likely, your password file got corrupted.
At any rate, you can check to see the last time the
password file was modified with 'ls -l /etc/passwd'
If the date seems much more recent than you think
it should be, then it's possible someone gained access.
- Steve
