Got Root?

The Openroot project has started. Evidently, they have opened up root on a FreeBSD 4.1 machine to pretty much everyone. They have disabled any access to connect out from the machine, but you can connect to it on several key ports (like telnet on port 30 and ircd on port 6667). They have taken some pretty heavy precautions (like jailing it, a feature that was introduced with FreeBSD 4.x).(Update 11/24, BSD-Pat) kaworu has decided to use OpenBSD 2.7 instead. Openroot will probably be down until later tonight.

Its creator, known by "kaworu" on Openroot, is optimistic, although he's already been plagued by some immature users, he is pretty sure that, because of the restrictions, it will be a good sandbox and learning environment for all those who want to be systems administrators.

He also thinks it would be a good learning experience in security for himself, and some others who are willing to help out.

I wish them good luck!

Comments

Maturity (was: Re:Great Idea)

[rbrito]

I do think that this is a great idea and also a way of giving back to the community. After all, people took their time to write good operating systems for the good of the community.

Some people, who don't write programs, can indeed help the other members of the community by alternative ways. One of such ways is writing documentation. Another one is helping friends with. And another one, much less common inded, is to share one's resources to other members of the community so that the community can use these resources for its enlightening and common "growth".

This would be the situation in an advanced community, where people would have the responsibility and know what they should and what they shouldn't do with respect to other members.

It is quite sad that some people are messing kaworu's system.

Perhaps some people are not yet prepared for living in community.

What to do as root?

[Chacham]

Knowing root on someone's machine, that just takes all the fun out of it. A number of people I know log in as root to their own boxes all the time, out of sheer laziness, so they won't have to su later. I wonder if they'd even know the difference.

Back up

[metaphor]

Open-Root is back up again.

Telnet to sekt7.org port 30, login as openroot with password Gotroot. Su to root with password Ihatelamers.

Make sure you visit the OpenRoot homepage and the discussion board to post any changes you've made on the system.

The official IRC channel is irc.openprojects.net #openroot. Enjoy. We haven't had any script kiddies yet after switching to OpenBSD. Please keep it that way. Maybe it's OpenBSD's aura?

Kayo, co-sysadmin