root password required for basic troubleshooting

[Chris Murphy]

Hi,

In Fedora 20 and 21, the installer doesn't require setting the root
password. Yet systemd in both requires a root password to do anything,
including basic boot time troubleshooting, in both rescue.target and
emergency.target.

If the user is dropped to an emergency shell at boot, and are referred
to rdsosreport.txt, they can't do anything if they haven't set a root
password. And if they need to do a password reset, they're stuck also.

Questions

Is this the intended and desired UX for Workstation?

If not, what policy change is most practical? Requiring the user set a
root password, or somehow enabling systemd emergency.target to accept
a non-root user in group wheel?

Points of comparison

Windows has a burdensome password reset method, but it does offer
startup repair environments that don't require a password. OS X has a
safe boot option, as well as a separate recovery environment, also
without requiring a password, and a password reset can be done within
this environment.



-- 
Chris Murphy