[arch-general] Initramfs fallback render

[Rodrigo Rivas]

On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 1:55 AM, Ismael Bouya
<ismael.bouya at normalesup.org>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have always learnt that it was good practice (to use sudo instead of root
> su and), when we use sudo, to completely disable root login (by disabling
> his password).
>

Well, good practices are sometimes questioned...


> However when we need to boot into "fallback mode", initramfs asks for root
> password! Is there a standard/automated way to ask/permit another user via
> initramfs in Archlinux?


...because you should only do that when your boot console is secure. The
argument is that if anyone has physical access to your computer, they can
boot from a LiveCD or USB anyway...


> If not, how do you deal with that usually?
>

Let's go to the point! The pasword is asked by the systemd services
"emergency.service" or "rescue.service", that run "/sbin/sulogin".

So your easiest solution is to modify these services to use the argument
"--force", that according to "man sulogin" will do what you want:

For that create the directory "/etc/systemd/system/emergency.service.d" and
in it the file "10-nopasswd.conf" with this content:

    [Service]
    ExecStart=-/sbin/sulogin --force

And the same repacing rescue for emergency.

HTH
Rodrigo.