blog/_posts/2014-03-04-don-t-set-an-empty-root-password-on-chrome-os.md

permalink	title	published_date	layout	data
/{{ year }}/{{ month }}/{{ day }}/don-t-set-an-empty-root-password-on-chrome-os	Don't set an empty root password on Chrome OS	2014-03-04 16:41:00 +0100	post.liquid	route blog

So I got this Chromebook in Developer Mode and wanted to set a root password to atleast protect it a little.

Easy:

sudo chromeos-setdevpasswd

Oh, wait. You pressed enter twice here? Backup your data and reset the device.

This is what chromeos-setdevpasswd does:

#!/bin/sh

mkdir -p /mnt/stateful_partition/etc
echo "chronos:$(openssl passwd -1)" > /mnt/stateful_partition/etc/devmode.passwd

openssl does not care that you just used an empty password, atleast if you also verify it. But so do su and sudo, which means you won't be able to get root rights again.

But it's Chrome OS after all, so most things are stored in your Google profile anyway, resetting and restoring the thing is done easily.