# Bug? No. Feature? Sure. But...



## qu-bit (Mar 12, 2022)

Dear Free Folks,

Recently, I was checking Freebsd in search of something light-weight for my use case, when I’ve encountered with this.

*Observation* : When we ssh into a default freebsd installation with a sudo privileged user and try to shut it down , on host system monitor window(tty) it ask to put "Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh: ". If we press ENTER there, we are “root” without password.

*More observation*: This doesn’t happen on reboot, not even on ‘shutdown -r’.

*My best guess*: The best help I found on “man rescue”. Why it goes into rescue mode? May be server should not go down without master’s permission.

*Prevention*: During installation we can choose “Enable console password prompt” from system security hardening options.

*PS*: I haven’t added any system logs because you can re-create it on freebsd 13. My whole interaction with freebsd is less than three months and we are going to celebrate 30th birthday of our big baby. I don’t believe it’s a bug. Most probably, am getting something wrong. So dear geeks, roast me.


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## Geezer (Mar 12, 2022)

qu-bit said:


> *More observation*: This doesn’t happen on reboot, not even on ‘shutdown -r’.



No, nor with `shutdown -p` or `shutdown -h`.

You have to decide _how_ you are going to shutdown, rather than merely dropping into single user mode.

`man shutdown`


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## _martin (Mar 12, 2022)

Do have a look at shutdown(8), especially this part:
	
	



```
When run without options, the shutdown utility will place the system into
     single user mode at the time specified.
```
So indeed it's a feature not a bug. And very useful one too.

If having root on console without password is your concern look at ttys(5) and set the `insecure` flag for console.


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## grahamperrin@ (Mar 12, 2022)

Welcome to FreeBSD Forums.

`shutdown now` leads to _single user_ mode.

In this mode, it is normal to not require a password.

The same result if you select single user mode when starting FreeBSD.

FreeBSD home page amusements



qu-bit said:


> … less than three months and we are going to celebrate 30th birthday …



If my calculation is correct, 2022 will mark the 29th anniversary, not the 30th.





Removal of the 25th anniversary image is long overdue  <https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=261058#c0>


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## Geezer (Mar 13, 2022)

grahamperrin said:


> If my calculation is correct, 2022 will mark the 29th anniversary, not the 30th.


Well that deserves its own thread. Or even a PR.

I don't think it is on the right part of the page, right under 'New to FreeBSD?' That is a bit like saying, "_You just got here, we've been here for ages_."


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