On Mon, 4 Dec 2017, Chris Murphy wrote:

> >> === Root Account ===

>>> group. We will remove the root password creation spoke. 
>>> All Workstation installs will have no root password set by 
>>> default, as in Ubuntu. Having a root password is not 
>>> useful for nontechnical users, and it is confusing to ask 
>>> users to create multiple passwords

If this is a communication problem, why remove a password, 
just remove the spoke? 

Set _some_ DRP password, deterministically to an unguessible 
value, and save that value in a well-named file on the root 
volume

# umask 077
# date +%s > /root-passwd.txt ; ( head -n 1 /root-passwd.txt ; \
        lvdisplay | grep -i UUID | rev | awk {'print $1'} | rev | \
        sort | head -n 1 ) | md5sum  >> /root-passwd.txt

... and set the root password to the value of the last line of 
/root-passwd.txt


An interested user may:
        1. note it for a rainy day

        2. change it to taste and rm the file

A disinterested user may ignore it

A person to whom the user takes a 'sick box' can use recovery 
media tool, loop moount a balky drive, and read the file to 
note the credential, and then boot down into a recovery mode 
with the needed credential

> Also, for any kind of early boot troubleshooting even once a user is
> created, systemd emergency and rescue targets only accept root user
> login. If root user is disabled, it's impossible to do such early boot
> troubleshooting. So I think systemd needs a way to accept an admin
> user (wheel group) as an alternative login rather than only root.

I really dislike adding a new 'secret way to crack into a box' 
and the complexity it would add to systemd, and auditting the 
same, a lot more than I dislike leaving a cleartext file with 
a complex password.

And of course this does not come anywhere a secured grub 
bootloader discussion, nor LUKS, and clevis and tang ;)

-- Russ herrold
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