Sunday, March 30, 2008

Password protect grub

By default with Ubuntu the user can use grub to login with root privileges WITHOUT a password, which I don't feel comfortable with. This is how I password protected grub to prevent changing the boot process:

> grub
grub> md5crypt

Password: YOUR_PASSWORD
Encrypted: abcdef

grub> quit


Now copy the encrypted string into the start of the grub file:

> sudo vim /boot/grub/menu.lst
password --md5 abcdef
lock

After saving change the permissions to prevent other uses viewing the file:
> sudo chmod 600 /boot/grub/menu.lst

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