Quoting John Hupp: > I was finally able to return to this. > > Lance Levsen was the first to reply to my question, and indicated > the general approach thus: > > What about a passwordless login setup in the chroot for root. Then > just a bash for loop? > > $> for i in LIST; do ssh -l root $i shutdown -h now; done > > where LIST is a list of hosts? > > RĂ¼diger Kupper and David Burgess followed as below. But I am stuck > at the "passwordless login setup in the chroot for root." Following > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo, I enabled the root > account (on the LTSP host and in the client image), but a password > was required. > > I read in > http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man5/passwd.5.htmlthat if > /etc/passwd has an "x" in the password field for the user of > interest (and it does indeed for root), then the actual password > hash will be located in /etc/shadow, but that file does not exist. > I was imagining that I might delete the field in shadow to arrive at > a no-password state.
Rather than poke around in /etc/shadow and risk locking yourself out by changing something other than the password hash there is a command to replace a password with a "no password" password, but be warned: (a) it is a horrific security hole to have the root user which does not require a password (b) only root may invoke it - not even may a user (other than root) invoke it for itself! (c) I have only used it in a straight forward configuration, i.e. not in ltsp thin clients! So there is no guarantee what may ensue. Some way toward guarding against undesirable conditions (e.g. one attempts to login, there ensues an insistence to give a password, but there is no valid password and a simple press of the enter-key is not accepted either!) is to open a second console login as root there also (before "blanking the password) from which one may recreate some root password in case things go pear shaped. Ok, with those caveats out of the way the command (as root) is passwd -d root Also if desired (only root may do it) passwd -d user <snip all the rest> Richard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_sfd2d_oct _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net