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

[David Herrmann]

Hi

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 11:07 AM, Francis Moreau <francis.moro at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Why would an installer create an empty shadow file?

> 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...

Depending on your distribution, it is.

Thanks
David