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Re: Lost root password!!



On Mon, Apr 22, 2002 at 04:12:02PM -0600, Stefan Srdic wrote:
> Last night when I attempted to change my root password passwd bunked out on me. It crashed and I received the following message on the console:
> 
> passwd: Critical error - immediate abort

Ooo...

> I thought that I could still use my old root password but cannot. I attempted to boot straight into a shell (init=/bin/sh) and manually expire my root password (so that I could change it on the next login) and ended up with the same results. I've also tried deleting the root passwd to see if I could then re-run passwd as root and change my passwd. No luck.

Have you used a rescue disk or installation CD?

> I can still log into my system as a normal user but cannot change any users passwords, I get the same error message as above.

Is your /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow have invalid entries or gotten
corrupted?

> Is passwd in Woody broken? How can I fix my broken root password without harming my system? 

I hope not :(

-Anne
-- 

              .-"".__."``".   Anne Carasik, System Administrator
 .-.--. _...' (/)   (/)   ``'   gator@cacr.caltech.edu 
(O/ O) \-'      ` -="""=.    ',  Center for Advanced Computing Research    
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