passwd command hangs when trying to change password.

[rob nolen]

Hello,

I am trying to change the password for a user on my 11iv2 box. When I type passwd , my shell just hangs... doesn't do anything at all. I have to ctrl-c to get back to a prompt.

Anyone ever experience this before?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The first thing that I would do is "type passwd" to determine if you are running the "real" passwd command. You could be running a Trojan Horse.

[rob nolen]

/usr/bin/passwd.

In sam, I can change passwords fine.

If I just type passwd to change password for root, pops right up and asks me for the new password.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

could you tell a bit more about your system, trusted? shadow passwd file? nis?

Best regards,
Robert-Jan

[john kingsley]

Try running pwck to look for problems with your password file.

Is this an NIS user account you are trying to change?

Is this a trusted system?

[Bill Hassell]

Or do you have NIS for passwords? Hangs are often related to networking problems.

[rob nolen]

Sorry for the lack of detail.

We are not running shadow, no NIS, and not a trusted system.

All accounts are local to this machine, and we aren't doing anything over the network.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

One of the big differences when you run passwd as root is that you are probably running /sbin/passwd rather than /usr/bin/passwd. By any chance, have you "improved" the security of your system and cleared the setuid bit on /usr/bin/passwd? Also, do a bdf and make sure that there are no full filesystems -- especially /var and /.

[rob nolen]

Funny. When I run /sbin/passwd it works fine. Suid bit is still on /usr/sbin/passwd.

[rob nolen]

Also, filesystems have plenty of free space.

[John Kittel]

I'd still be suspicious that /usr/bin/passwd is not the "real" one. For example, probably a bad practice, but I've seen passwd be replaced with a wrapper that attempts to add some other functionality. Don't know how to determine for sure if that is the case. You could at least try "file /usr/bin/passwd" and "ll /usr/bin/passwd", see if anything looks funny ( or post results).

Also, I thought John Kingsley's suggestion to run pwck was good. Did you try that?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You should be able to run passwd under tusc to find out what system call it is waiting to complete.