On Apr 22, 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
>
> 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.
>
> 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 passwd in Woody broken? How can I fix my broken root password without
> harming my system?
>
> Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
>
well I would use the Debian rescue disks, this will drop you into the debian
install menu (you could use the CD instead), press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to move to
another console, press the return key and you will get a root prompt. from
here you will be able to mount the disk root partition and play with it to
your hearts content, you probably were using shadow passwords so you will
need to edit /etc/shadow rather than /etc/root.
Other details I will leave to you to work out.... :P
Alex
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