On Thu, 6 Nov 1997, Oliver Elphick wrote: > >What I'd like to know is, might I be able to use the old working passwd > >and shadow files instead? What files does Linux need to perform any > >password authentication, and how does it do it? I re-added all the users > >that were in the passwd file before, and used the same password for each > >user, but obviously the encryption string was different than before. Does > >anyone have an idea about how I can fix this? > > I have done this before with no problems. > > For safety, copy the current versions somewhere, put the old ones back > and then try logging in from another virtual terminal. If it works, you > can delete the unwanted versions.
Well, that seemed to work. Thank you for the tip. Would I be able to do the same with dpkg? The dselect status got all messed up as well, and I don't want to reinstall each package for fear of destroying what's on there now. Is the /var/lib/dkpg directory the only thing that needs to be restored, or are there other files which are responsible for letting dpkg know what is installed, and what isn't. Basically I'm trying to get my system to the same state it was at before I reinstalled it from the floppies. However, I'm not entirely sure which files were zapped. Ritchard -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
