topic Re: Tying to change password in Operating System - HP-UX

Tying to change password

Angela Shepherd — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:40:31 GMT

Receiving the following message when I try to change my password:

passwd: alter: not found.
passwd[2]: /SD_CDROM: Execute permission denied.
passwd[3]: alter: not found.
passwd[4]: /SD_CDROM: Execute permission denied.
passwd[5]: alter: not found.
passwd[6]: /SD_CDROM: Execute permission
denied.

Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

Re: Tying to change password

Umapathy S — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:43:16 GMT

I think your /etc/passwd file may be corrupted. Try running pwck on your system.

HTH,
Umapathy

Re: Tying to change password

Stuart Abramson_2 — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 13:03:48 GMT

The output sequence you are getting looks odd. Like error messages from a script at lines 2, 3, 4, 5...

Are you located in /SD_CDOM? Do you have a file in /SD_CDROM called "passwd", and you have put "." in your current path (which you are not supposed to do.)?

cd / and try this again.

Re: Tying to change password

Umapathy S — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 13:09:45 GMT

Or is it a wrapper around original passwd?

Re: Tying to change password

Keith Bevan_1 — Fri, 31 Oct 2003 08:55:58 GMT

Angela,

I don't know if you have got this resolved yet, and even if you have the information below may be useful anyway.
Someone could have written a script on your system called passwd that is spoofing your passwd change and sending out an erroneous message.

Type :-

type passwd

The response should be something like :-

passwd is /usr/bin/passwd

Then type :-

file /usr/bin/passwd
(or whatever the path was as above)

The output should be like :-

/usr/bin/passwd: PA-RISC1.1 shared executable dynamically linked

You can also check the date and permission on the file :-

ls -l /usr/bin/passwd

Last of all, if the above is okay then type :-

pwck

as this will check the integrity of you /etc/password file.

If all the above is okay then at least you can feel comfortable that the passwd security is okay and it must be something else.

Hope this helps.

Keith