Help!!! - Potato upgrade using dselect trashed computer...

[Doug Thistlethwaite <doug.t@deltanet.com>]

Hello & Help!

I have a potato system that was running fine until a few minutes ago...

I used dselect to select a package and it wanted to upgrade a bunch on
stuff.  I let it because I was interested to see how long it would take
with my new DSL connection.

After the upgrade I have seen these problems: (It upgraded about 50M of
packages).

1. I can not login to a virtual terminal.  When I try I do not even get
prompted for a password.  I looked in my /etc/passwd file and all of the
password fields are now :x: except for a user called 'admin'.

2. I tried to set a password of an account and I get a segmentation
fault when I try to run passwd.

3. My x-server CTRL-ALT + F7 now has the following error message instead
of a graphical login screen.
su[4340] PAM (other) illegal module type: OTHER

What is going on?  Please help me recover my system.  I currently have a
single login as root where I was running dselect.  I am afraid to log
off because I don't want to be locked out permanently.

Thanks in advance,

Doug