password change

[Dave Bunting]

Hi,
would like to know why i am receiving error message "current user has no entry in protected password entry"

Thanks in advance...

[Michael Tully · Accepted solution]

Hi,

It could be that your password file has been edited and the user has not been added through either SAM or the 'useradd' command. Try to run 'pwck' to see what it reports. You can see the entry in /tcb/files/auth/letter to see if any corresponding entry exists. (I suspect not)If this is the case suggest you remove the user id from the password file using 'vipw' and set it up properly.

[Animesh Chakraborty]

Hi,
I guess someone edited your /etc/passwd file and manually added that user.

Thanks
Animesh

[Michael Tully]

Hi, (again)

I should have mentioned that when running the 'pwck' command run as:
# /usr/sbin/pwck -s
This checks the consistency with the protected password database.

HTH
-Michael

[Dave Bunting]

my userid exists in /tcb/files/auth/directory...

still unable to solve prob... taught i already fixed it :-(

[Michael Tully]

Hi Dave,

Suggest you try and remove the offending
userid (unfortunately yours) keep your
directory etc and try to re-instate it.
It certainly seems like there is some
sort of corruption. What was the output
of 'pwck -s'

-Michael

[Dave Bunting]

;-) Gosh Mike, I'll never run out of points to give you...
The output of pwck -s shows two userids 'login directory not found'
what do you mean by 'reinstate /etc/passwd' file? how do i do that?
Thanks again for the never ending help

[Michael Tully]

Hi Dave, (again..)

What I meant was to remove the offending account(s) and add them back in using either 'sam' or the 'useradd' command, not the password file itself.
Now getting to the output where it says 'login directory not found'. What this means is that there is no actual home directory for the
users as to what was reported. Maybe this is just the problem. For each account that this message appears next to create the directory where it is stated from the /etc/passwd file. To fix this you should be logged in as 'root' or equivalent. Where I say "userid" replace it with the account that has the reported problem.

# grep "userid" /etc/passwd
e.g. user fredb has his directory as /home/fredb
this is probably missing.
# mkdir /home/fredb; chown fredb:users /home/fredb
# cp /etc/skel/.profile /home/fredb ; chown fredb /home/fredb/.profile
etc....

Geez... I hope this fixes this... Let me know how you get on.... Don't worry it is pleasure to help.

-Michael

[Dave Bunting]

Hi Again Mike,
This seemed to be strange, I haven't done anything yet, just changed permission of /etc/passwd to rw-r--r--, root can now modify users' passwds but users cannot do passwd themselves, either via command line or via sam (even root cannot modify passwords via sam)I tested by creating a new user, sam gave me a default password, root logs out, when the new user logs in, he was prompted for the old and new password, then an error occured ' no protected password entry'
any more info?
thanks again... :-(