Re: Improper shutdown - weird results

[John Foster <jfoster@augustmail.com>]

Hugo van der Merwe wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> A friend of mine, for whom I installed Debian, recently accidentily turned
> off his computer before the shutdown process was complete. When he booted
> back up, the whole thing was messed up... (He had to run fsck manually,
> and probably said "y" to all questions.)
> 
> It turned out that his /etc/group file was incorrect (out dated, or
> something weird, but still recognisable), his /etc/shadow file contained
> what should have been the current /etc/group, his /etc/passwd contained
> what should have been /etc/shadow! Needless to say, he couln't log in.
> (There was some error message that looked something like "::: No such file
> or directory" - not that I'm 100% sure of the formatting, this was all
> told over the telephone...). After moving the files around (in single user
> mode), and copying /etc/passwd- to /etc/passwd, he could log in again, but
> instead of the login prompt:
> 
> user@hostname:~$
> 
> he had:
> 
> I have no name!@hostname:~$
> 
> (Or so he explained over the telephone...) I suggested deleting the user
> and recreating it, out of laziness. (Oops, I just realize that that
> probably took him out of the groups as well, but he'll figure that out
> quickly and fix it.)
> 
> What I was wondering, firstly, is how these files could have been moved
> around... he logged out all the users, and it didn't sound like he was
> running anything strange just before it.
> 
> The second thing is, why the "I have no name"? Anyone have any idea where
> that info is supposed to be? I'd think it simply uses the login name...
> 
> Anyway, just sharing an "incomplete shutdown experience"...
> Hugo van der Merwe
------------------------------------------------------------
Just a guess but did he have the filesystem mounted when he ran fsck :-)

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John Foster                                
jfoster@augustmail.com 
ICQ# 19460173