PASSWD file hosed...

[Mikko Työläjärvi]

On Sat, 4 Oct 2003, Eric F Crist wrote:

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> Hello,
>
> I'm sure you're all getting sick of my being so vocal, but here goes anyway.
>
> I was messing around as root in KDE and found the KUser application.  I tried
> adding a user (my girlfriend), and when done, nobody could log in.  I managed

Mmm... GUIs.

> to boot into single user, which logged me in a toor.  I had to mount the file
> systems r/w and finally got my username's password reset, after finding a
> bunch of format errors in the /etc/master.passwd file.  My problem is that
> the was no root user listed, just toor and all the others.  How can I change

If your machine has been up and running for a while, you will have
backup files in /var/backup.  Have a look at /var/backups/master.passwd.bak.
If it looks contains everything you want, copy it to /etc/master.passwd.
Otherwise just edit /etc/master.passwd and add the root entry. The
default one without password looks like:

 root::0:0::0:0:Charlie &:/root:/bin/csh

Then run "pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd" and you're back in business.

> this?  Also, I've set the console as insecure, so it's going to ask me for a
> root password.

This is controlled in the file "/etc/ttys".

     $.02,
     /Mikko