Mysterious password reset when ...

[K.C. Chan]

All,
I have a desktop which reset root's password when ever we have a power failure in the office. I do not know what is set to, but I was able to boot into single user mode and change it. This happen ed twice. I am wondering how can I find out where the default setting is stored at? Thanks.

[Jerome Henry]

Did you look at if it wasn't your keyboard settingfs that were resetted ?

J

[K.C. Chan]

Jerome, what do you mean keyboard setting? Like if caps lock is on or off; Yes I did check this?

[Jerome Henry]

No,
I mean your keyboard going back to US settings (qwerty) instead of your regional settings...

J

[K.C. Chan]

Jerome,
How do I make sure the setting is correct for the keyboard? Which config file? Thanks.

[Jerome Henry]

The easiest way to check is to choose a password from the numeric keyboard, say 8888.
When this problem occur, you are sure this part won't change, so if you can login you can try on a shell to type something from the alphabetic keyboard.

If it's not the case, then check your logs to see what happens last before shortage.

J

[Patrick Van Humbeeck]

or just type in the password in the login field to make sure the keys are correctly mapped.

can you see anything in the system logs in relation with a password change?