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Can't change root password


Guest wahro02
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Guest wahro02

Morning folks -

 

We are running Mandrake MNF 8.2.

 

Recently, the root password expired and was changed at the console. After changing it, it no longer worked, even the previous password. I could not boot into single-user mode, as it asked for a "maintenance password". I had to boot with a Linux live CD and edit /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow to blank out the root password.

 

This allowed me to enter single-user mode, as it no longer asked me for a maintenance password. At the prompt, I did passwd to reset the root password. Rebooted. The password still did not work when trying to log in as root at the console command line (no GUI). However - the new password does work as the maintenance password and also works when I issue the reboot command as a user. It does not work when I try to sudo though.

 

In summary:

- root password works for single user maintenance mode

- root password works when I issue reboot command as a user

- root password does not work when I try to log in as root at the console

 

Any thoughts on what the problem might be?

 

 

Regards -

 

Robert

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What's your pam configuration? Changed this recently attempting to authentication through other sources than passwd?

 

Incidently, you don't need to comment root out of /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow. Once you've booted the live cd, you just simply chroot into your Mandrake install and then use passwd in the normal way for resetting the root password.

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Guest wahro02

No changes to anything in pam.d. Everything in it is 5+ years old.

 

My fault: I didn't comment out root from /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow. I just deleted anything in the second field; i.e. the entry now looks like

 

root::(whatever else follows)

 

in both files.

 

I'll try the live CD and chroot when I bring the firewall down again.

 

Thanks much for the reply.

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Guest wahro02

No luck. I did the following:

 

- booted from a Puppy Linux live CD

- opened a terminal session

- mounted the appropriate drive of the host

- chroot /mnt/sda1 /bin/bash

- passwd

 

I received the "all auth tokens updated" message and both /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow had current timestamps. Still the same situation though: the root password works to enter single mode and to reboot while logged in with a different account, but not for logging in root directly, and not for sudo (if that helps).

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Can you tell me what the contents of your /etc/securetty file is? This is how mine looks:

 

[ian@esprit ~]$ cat /etc/securetty 
tty0
tty1
tty2
tty3
tty4
tty5
tty6
vc/1
vc/2
vc/3
vc/4
vc/5
vc/6

 

maybe yours is empty and why cannot login. Just a guess, because I can't figure out why.

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Guest wahro02

This looks interestingly promising:

 

 

# ls -lrt securetty

-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 Mar 10 2004 securetty

 

 

Nothing in it and never was?

 

Googling for Mandrake mnf and securetty, I found a similar issue in these forums:

 

 

 

Mandrake MNF - Spoofing MAC address - How?

 

I can login using a secondary account and su works, so I guess I'm ok. I think I tried sudo before...

 

Thanks for the help

 

 

*More*

 

Per the link above, it looks like the "PermitRootLogin without-password" entry in /etc/ssh/sshd_config plays some part in this also.

Edited by wahro02
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