Re: Passwd fails - what went wrong?

[Ramasubramanian Ramesh <rramesh@ti.com>]

Kam-Ming Siu wrote:

> Try 
>
> adduser -G users lata
>
> May be the group "lata" does not exist as you adding the new user. As I
> know by default debian would not create individual group for new user.
>
> Regards,
> Ming
>
> On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 07:07:00PM -0600, Ramasubramanian Ramesh wrote:
>  
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have not changed passwd or added user for quite some time. This has 
> > been the case across several apt-get upgrades. Finally when I got to a 
> > point I wanted to setup an account, I ran into the following difficulty.
> >
> >   lata [root] 54 > adduser lata
> >   Adding user lata...
> >   Adding new group lata (1002).
> >   Adding new user lata (1002) with group lata.
> >   Creating home directory /home/lata.
> >   Copying files from /etc/skel
> >   passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
> >   adduser: `/usr/bin/passwd lata' returned error code 10.  Aborting.
> >   Cleaning up.
> >   Removing directory `/home/lata'
> >   Removing user `lata'.
> >   Removing group `lata'.
> >   groupdel: group lata does not exist
> >
> > I suspect one of the upgrades have subtly changed something. I am not 
> > sure what it is. All other things (that I tried) seem to work. Can you 
> > tell me what is broken? How to fix it?
> >
> > Thanks and Regards
> > Ramesh
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >    
>
>
>  
No that is not the problem. The passwd itself fails and I cannot change 
passwd for any user. In fact the above transcript points this out.

passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
adduser: `/usr/bin/passwd lata' returned error code 10.  Aborting.

It adds the group alright. It is the passwd setting that fails. It is 
some PAM setup issue. I do not know for sure if it is. If so what do I 
need to fix it.

Thanks and Regards
Ramesh