root: no shell

[Damiano Angelo]

We can't login with root user because in the passwd file there is a wrong shell specification:
root:/y.QL0TL6uJH.:0:3::/:/sbin/ksh
(/sbin/ksh doesn't exist).

trying to login we receive the following message: "no shell"

We have:
/etc/passwd -r--r--r-- 1 root sys
/etc dr-xr-xr-x 33 bin bin
/sbin dr-xr-xr-x 13 bin bin

We cannot login using bin or adm or sys users because system asks for password we don't know.

It seems to be only root user with 'root' privileges.

Is there a method to bypass the problem or to have root privileges with a another user???

Thanks.

[G. Vrijhoeven]

Hi,

What you can do is login as normal user and su to root ( without - ). If this does not work you could try restoring a backup of /etc/passwd with the correct shell, become root and put back the original shell.

Gideon

[MarkSyder · Accepted solution]

If you boot into single user mode you should be able to edit the /etc/passwd file and change ksh to sh.

Instructions for accessing single user mode differ for different OS versions, so if you don't know what to do let us know more details about your system.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Franky_1]

Hi,

if you boot into single user mode (interrupt boot process, boot pri, hpux -is (boot)then you should be able to change the entry in /etc/passwd from ksh to sh.

HTH

[Marc Roger]

To avoid this kind of problems in the future, it's better to use commands such as chsh/chfn/passwd rather than editing the /etc/passwd directly.

[G. Vrijhoeven]

Hi,

I addition to Makrs command, you could use vipw in the future for editing the passwd file. It also checks the result.

Gideon

[Damiano Angelo]

We fixed the problem rebooting in single user mode and temporarily changing the passwd permission bits, allowing passwd modification.
We entered as normal user in init 3 running level and supplied right shell value in passwd.
Then re-rebooted the system normally.
We do apologise for our english and thanks a lot for your help.

[Fabio Ettore]

Ciao Damiano,

dato che i ragazzi dell'ITRC ti hanno aiutato e suggerito come risolvere il problema potresti assegnare loro dei punti?
Benvenuto nei forum di ITRC! ;-)

Buona giornata!
Ettore

P.S.: Perfavore non assegnare punti a questo mio post...

Translate in English:
since ITRC guys gave you suggestions about how to solve the problem, could you assign them points?
Welcome in ITRC forum!

Have a nice day!
Ettore

P.S.: please no point for me in this post...

[Bill Hassell]

Very important: don't change root's shell. /sbin/sh is *NOT* the Bourne shell like other versions of Unix. It is the POSIX shell, a superset of ksh. So the features that you like in ksh (and BASH, both are POSIX standard) are found in /sbin/sh (and for ordinary users, /usr/bin/sh).