When I was working as a consultant a number of years ago, I worked with another sysadmin to do a scripted root password change. I provided a perl script to randomize the crypt salt on a given password and return the crypt string. The other admin used the script in some code he had to do the actual substitution with sed(1) on the shadow(4) file. He used '/' as his sed(1) delimiter.....
We got lucky and only 10 of 300+ systems picked a salt that generated a '/' as part of the string. On those systems, of course, there would be 4 delimiters for sed and it just croaked, leaving an empty shadow file behind. (Be sure to check return codes and file sizes!!). Checking with other admins we were able to correct 7 without major outage. 3 system required an immediate outage to recover from the now empty shadow file, I now am much more careful using delimiters in any substitution regex. Eric On Fri, 13 May 2011, Tom Perrine wrote: > Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 15:54:00 -0700 > From: Tom Perrine <[email protected]> > To: LOPSA General Discussions <[email protected]> > Subject: [lopsa-discuss] "Stupid SysAdmin tricks for $500, Alex" > > Those of you not in #lopsa (shame on you!) are missing a great thread... > > Great typos, the best way to destroy a system, unexpected command line > results... > > Here are a few: > > Reformatting a partition that was in use > rm -rf .? > removing /lib/libc.so > > So, what's your most memorable command line typo, "think-o", > "brain-fart", or "#$$@#$*&@#$" moment? > > What subtle opportunity for massive destruction would you pass on as a > warning to the next generation of system administrators? > > Don't limit yourself to bash/csh, feel free to explore databases, > storage and network catastrophes! > > "Share and enjoy" > > --tep > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ > _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
