Bug? No. Feature? Sure. But...

[qu-bit]

Dear Free Folks,

Recently, I was checking Freebsd in search of something light-weight for my use case, when I’ve encountered with this.

Observation : When we ssh into a default freebsd installation with a sudo privileged user and try to shut it down , on host system monitor window(tty) it ask to put "Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh: ". If we press ENTER there, we are “root” without password.

More observation: This doesn’t happen on reboot, not even on ‘shutdown -r’.

My best guess: The best help I found on “man rescue”. Why it goes into rescue mode? May be server should not go down without master’s permission.

Prevention: During installation we can choose “Enable console password prompt” from system security hardening options.

PS: I haven’t added any system logs because you can re-create it on freebsd 13. My whole interaction with freebsd is less than three months and we are going to celebrate 30th birthday of our big baby. I don’t believe it’s a bug. Most probably, am getting something wrong. So dear geeks, roast me.

 

[Geezer]

More observation: This doesn’t happen on reboot, not even on ‘shutdown -r’.

No, nor with shutdown -p or shutdown -h.

You have to decide how you are going to shutdown, rather than merely dropping into single user mode.

man shutdown

 

[_martin]

Do have a look at shutdown(8), especially this part:

     When run without options, the shutdown utility will place the system into
     single user mode at the time specified.

So indeed it's a feature not a bug. And very useful one too.

If having root on console without password is your concern look at ttys(5) and set the insecure flag for console.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Welcome to FreeBSD Forums.

shutdown now leads to single user mode.

In this mode, it is normal to not require a password.

The same result if you select single user mode when starting FreeBSD.

FreeBSD home page amusements

… less than three months and we are going to celebrate 30th birthday …

If my calculation is correct, 2022 will mark the 29th anniversary, not the 30th.

Removal of the 25th anniversary image is long overdue <https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=261058#c0>

 

[Geezer]

If my calculation is correct, 2022 will mark the 29th anniversary, not the 30th.

Well that deserves its own thread. Or even a PR.

I don't think it is on the right part of the page, right under 'New to FreeBSD?' That is a bit like saying, "You just got here, we've been here for ages."