The case of the disabled logins
(Details have been changed to protect the guilty and to make the story more entertaining.)
I work for a company that builds robotic kiosks (think vending machines that cut keys), which are stationed in various stores across the country. One morning, I arrive at work to find a coworker looking troubled. “We’ve got a kiosk in Florida that’s stuck in the middle of shutting down. Can you take a look?” This isn’t my area of expertise, but somebody’s got to deal with this, and it looks like I’m somebody.
I try to SSH into the kiosk, but the connection is refused with the message, The system is going down for power off in 1 minute!. “It’s been saying that since I arrived half an hour ago,” my coworker explains. “It’s not actually going to shut down in a minute.” Read on to learn how we managed to log in again. →