Boys will be boys, saved by Ubuntu
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2006-05-27 05:24:07 - Graham EllisMany things were very different in the 1960s to the way they are today. Rosey-tinted spectacles, looking back on what's perceived as a golden age, may persuade many that life simpler and better back then, and there's a saying that "School days are the happiest days of your life". Well - I've news for you; there were some rough times, and with the right attitude / approach / employment, things can only get better rather than worse.
What brings these comments on? I've spend last week, and I'm spending next week, in a highly segregated society. The workforce at the hotel is all male, the course delegates are all male and some elements remind me of my all male school days. A certain rivalry and a certain prankishness that proves, I suppose, that 'boys will be boys' and to be very happy that both Chris and Kimberly went to mixed schools. Were we just swimming with the tide when we chose the school? No - it was a conscious decision and I've see just one tiny corner of the old carpet lifted here to remind me why.
When I travel, I know what I'll do in the event of a hardware failure, or a problem with a course. The further I am from base, the more are the precautions taken ahead of time. Delegate workstations here are provided by the company organising the course, so that's really outside my area ... but I brought two rather than one laptop for my own use, backed up onto each other, and a selection of backup CDs and cables as well. "Better safe than sorry". It turns out that my backup plans are rather better than the local ones, and when the internet connections they have set up for the classroom doesn't function, I have two machines on line through which the delegates can check their email. And when one of their systems won't connect even to the classroom intranet, a data CD quickly allows the delegates access to the vital sample files we use during the course. Another machine has keyboard mapping issues, and a quick substitution for one of my own systems resolves THAT issue.
Some of my faster schoolboys, a.k.a. systems administrators, got to playing about for a few minutes during last week's course. Cross-login pranks; nothing too harmful or that detracted from the course once the ones who were newer to the subject had caught up with the exercises. Save for the fact that one, in self defence, changed all the passwords including root and put his system on an anti-intruder footing. Which made it kinda-hard for me to get beyond the login screen when I had to get the machine ready for the coming week. No easy "rebuild the machine" for me which is what I would have done with my own resources to hand.
But I am carrying an Ubuntu live CD - allows me to boot up a PC into linux without effecting the hard disc contents. And the one thing that hadn't been tightened on the rogue machine was the Bios / boot order, so I had my route in. Alas, all too quick and easy in the end ...
sudo mkdir /hard
sudo mount /dev/hda2 /hard
sudo vi /hard/etc/shadow
- delete the encoded password for root
- w! to save the changes
and reboot back to the hard drive to a system without a root password at all!