[systemd-devel] systemd-firstboot skip root password initialisation if /etc/shadow is present

[Francis Moreau]

Hello,

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 7:45 PM, David Herrmann <dh.herrmann at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 6:31 PM, Francis Moreau <francis.moro at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I find odd that systemd-firstboot skips root password init if
>> /etc/shadow exists because AFAICS this file is always part of a
>> minimal rootfs after being setup by an installer. Indeed it's
>> populated during package installation.
>>
>> So I can't see a case where systemd-firstboot would prompt for a root password.
>
> If an installer ships a shadow file, then we expect the installer to
> populate it. The firstboot tool will recover situations where you
> deleted /etc entirely (eg., factory reset).

>From the man page " systemd-firstboot initializes the most basic
system settings interactively on the first boot, or optionally
non-interactively when a system image is created."

And when a system image is created, usually root password won't be set
but it's *very* unlikely that /etc/shadow will be missing. That's the
reason why I don't think its going to work in real life.

BTW, I don't know if recovering when /etc/ has been deleted is
possible even if systemd-firstboot will restore a couple of conf
files...

Thanks.
-- 
Francis