sulogin man page on Debian

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SULOGIN(8)	      Linux System Administrator's Manual	    SULOGIN(8)

NAME
       sulogin - Single-user login

SYNOPSIS
       sulogin [ -e ] [ -p ] [ -t SECONDS ] [ TTY ]

DESCRIPTION
       sulogin	is  invoked  by	 init(8) when the system goes into single user
       mode.  (This is done through an entry in inittab(5).)  Init also	 tries
       to  execute  sulogin when the boot loader (e.g., grub(8)) passes it the
       -b option.

       The user is prompted

	    Give root password for system maintenance
	    (or type Control-D for normal startup):

       If the root account is locked, no  password  prompt  is	displayed  and
       sulogin behaves as if the correct password were entered.

       sulogin	will  be connected to the current terminal, or to the optional
       device that can be specified on the command line	 (typically  /dev/con‐
       sole).

       If  the	-t option is used then the program only waits the given number
       of seconds for user input.

       If the -p option is used then the single-user shell is invoked  with  a
       dash  as the first character in argv[0].	 This causes the shell process
       to behave as a login shell.  The default is not to do this, so that the
       shell will not read /etc/profile or $HOME/.profile at startup.

       After the user exits the single-user shell, or presses control-D at the
       prompt, the system will (continue to) boot to the default runlevel.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       sulogin looks for the environment variable SUSHELL or sushell to deter‐
       mine  what  shell  to start. If the environment variable is not set, it
       will try to execute root's shell from /etc/passwd.  If  that  fails  it
       will fall back to /bin/sh.

       This  is very valuable together with the -b option to init. To boot the
       system into single  user	 mode,	with  the  root	 file  system  mounted
       read/write, using a special "fail safe" shell that is statically linked
       (this example is valid for the LILO bootprompt)

       boot: linux -b rw sushell=/sbin/sash

FALLBACK METHODS
       sulogin checks the root password using the standard  method  (getpwnam)
       first.	Then,  if  the -e option was specified, sulogin examines these
       files directly to find the root password:

       /etc/passwd,
       /etc/shadow (if present)

       If they are damaged or nonexistent, sulogin will	 start	a  root	 shell
       without	asking	for a password. Only use the -e option if you are sure
       the console is physically protected against unauthorized access.

AUTHOR
       Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron.nl>

SEE ALSO
       init(8), inittab(5).

				  17 Jan 2006			    SULOGIN(8)
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