On 10/11/07, Bruce Dawson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Tom Buskey wrote: > > I had a user call about a user supported system that was having > issues. We > > explicitly do not support it and the users only use the root account. > > > > He gave me the root account to login and I couldn't. I went to his > system & > > looked around. /etc was empty. I told him he was fsked and he should > ftp > > any files he wanted to elsewhere & that he wouldn't be able to login > again > > or reboot. In any event, we were not supporting it. > > > > Sure enough, a help desk ticket came in for another admin, claiming that > the > > system got corrupted during bootup. Why do users lie so often? All it > does > > is obscure the problem... > >
Hmmm. Did you check lost+found? I've had similar symptoms only to > discover that there was indeed a bad sector that remapped all of /etc/ > and some of /var and /usr. fsck didn't help much until I moved the drive > to another system and ran fsck there. If /etc was empty, login would not have been able to find root's password in /etc/passwd. He had to have been in /etc and done rm * or similar after logging in. There was nothing in /var/adm/messages (it was Solaris). I really didn't care how/what happened. But if you spilled a bottle of milk on the floor, don't tell me a cow came through and had its udder burst. Just tell me you spilled some milk. > But you're right - if its not supported, then they'll have to go > elsewhere to get this done. > > BTW: My point is: the user may not have lied, but was just calling the > shot as s/he saw them. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word lie, but the system could only be like that IMO if the user wiped /etc after logging in and I told him the he wouldn't be able to login again and /etc was wiped. Whoever took the ticket was looking for a corrupted disk instead of a wiped /etc. I think it's alot like "The system is slow. What did you guys do? I didn't touch anything" and then you find out they installed WeatherBug or some such.
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