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suddenly, login of certain users fails...

Hi!

It happens sometimes that, all of a sudden, a user cannot log in anymore. And even root cannot change its password!! (passwd gives ok, but /etc/shadow is NOT changed).

I've RedHat 4.2 with shadow-support installed.

Any help appreciated!

alexbik

Hi,

Can you reproduce this, or does it seem to be random?
Check your /etc/passwd. Could it be that users failing
to login have a different shell?

Does your /etc/shadow contain the same users as /etc/passwd?
Are the users in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow in the same order?

Alex

proffi

ASKER

I found a workaround: If I move the user to a different location in /etc/shadow, it works again!! (whether to the top or to the bottom doesn't matter).

Of course I checked etc/passwd and /etc/shadow and /etc/group and they seem correct. All users have NO console access, only chrooted ftp to their home directory. I therefore checked the rights on their homes and they were ok, too...

What really struck me is, that passwd finished ok ("all authentication tokens updated successfully") whereas neither /etc/passwd nor /etc/shadow have been changed!

That happened now the second time since I installed RH4.2... OK I can live with it (as I now know how to proceed), but it's definitely not a feature, isn't it ? ;-(

proffi

alexbik

Have you tried another passwd program (or script)?

Alex

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jlms

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proffi

ASKER

Hi!

After upgrading to RH5 the problem disappeared. Thanks anyway!

I hope you got the points..

RU
theprofessor