NFS Root setup - can't log in as root after CHMOD ?
 

I've spent the better part of 2 or 3 hours a day for the past week trying and learning how to use NFS root to boot a smoothwall router from my SLES server here via pxe.

The night I succeed, I have some wackiness remaining (SQUID not turning on, etc...) so I figured I'd take a crack at chmod and make sure stuff could read/write properly to the share.

I used chmod -r 777 /tftpboot/nfsroot/smoothwall and it seemed to take. The problem is I can no longer log in.

Any tips? I take it there is some sort of security feature built into PAM if a file is readable?

What are the default permissions for passwd and shadow so I can reset them? Are there other applicable files?

Thanks in advance.

permissions for /etc/passwd, etc
 

On my system (ubuntu 6.06, no NFS):
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1046 2006-06-08 21:57 /etc/group
-rw-r----- 1 root shadow 918 2006-06-08 21:56 /etc/gshadow
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1477 2006-06-08 21:57 /etc/passwd
-rw-r----- 1 root shadow 1022 2006-06-08 21:56 /etc/shadow

Not sure about PAM refusing to accept 0777, but it seems quite logical. There should be quite a few other sensitive files that should be protected, but those four should be enough for simple authentication.

I believe you must also disable root_squash in NFS.

Hope this helps.

João