On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 10:34:46AM -0400, Vikki Roemer wrote: > > Well, I would, but I can't log in. I have it booting up now, I get a > login prompt, it'll accept my username, but it hangs trying to > authenticate my password. Do you think this is a problem with login (I > think that's the program), or whatever file the passwords are stored in? > The passwords aren't stored in /etc/passwd because they're encrypted-- > I know that much. And I tried logging in as both root and as a normal > user and both logins are hung.
I believe it is possible to replace the getty invocations in /etc/inittab with invocations of bash, to give you a vc which automatically executes a root shell without having to do any password authentication. I have never actually tried this, but I can't see any reason to think it wouldn't work. You can use pwck to verify the integrity of your password files. If they're OK it appears that login depends on libpam-modules, libpam0g and libc6, giving you four things to check / reinstall... Might be a good idea, for safety, to boot off an install disk / Knoppix or something, unpack the libc6 .deb by hand, and diff it against the possibly-damaged files on your HD... corruption in some rarely-used function could wreak havoc! -- Pigeon Be kind to pigeons Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x21C61F7F
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