On Thursday 11 January 2007 05:08, Fuhrmann Anna wrote:
>what is the shutdown user ready-made in the passwd file good for?
>- to be able to shut down, isn't it?
>
>So this is what I tried (in RHEL):
>"login:" > shutdown,
>"enter password:" so I did.
>what I get is: "you have to be root to do that.
>
>It sounds like the system misunderstands my answer to the login prompt
>as a command
>or - as the Germans would say: do I have tomatoes on my eyes (not to see
>something
>I should)?
Actually, it is not mis-understanding, it's doing what it was told. :-)
The /etc/passwd entry for the shutdown user has "/sbin/shutdown" in its shell
field, which means that after login authenticates your password, it
runs /sbin/shutdown instead of an interactive shell. The "you have to be
root to do that" message is from /sbin/shutdown.
Why it gives that error is a mystery to me. The shutdown user should be in
the "root" group (gid=0). Perhaps /sbin/shutdown needs to be SetGID for this
to work? It's not on my system.
I don't want to test this on my RHEL4 guest, so I can't tell you what happens
here. :-) I've never used the shutdown user, myself.
- MacK.
-----
Edmund R. MacKenty
Software Architect
Rocket Software, Inc.
Newton, MA USA
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