Re: changing password

[Mikel Bauer <mikel@bridgeband.net>]

Unfortunately, this will simply break your shadows.
The article on usenet refers to someone migrating from HPUX to RedHat.
The HPUX in question probably didn't have shadowed password, whereas 
redhat expects it.

pwconv takes a non shadowed password or group file, then creates the 
appropriate shadow. (pwunconv is the reverse).

The problem with your statement Keith is that if you delete the shadow 
file on a default redhat installation, you will have successfully 
deleted all of the passwords, and if you run pwconv on a standard redhat 
passwd file, you will basically have a copy of the passwd file, simply 
labelled shadow, minus the names, comments, shell and home.

This sounds more like a problem with either the passwd binary, or, if 
you are using it, PAM.

Unfortunately, I can offer no suggestions on what is really broken, or 
how to fix it.  I simply wanted to clear up the password issue.

-- 
Mikel Bauer
mikel@bridgeband.net

Keith Morse wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Kirkwood, David A wrote:
> 
> 
>> I tries to change passwords on the system and get the following:
>>
>>Changing password for user root.
>>passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
>>
>>I shut the system down to single user and got the same.
>>
>>I am running RH7.3. I know I have changed the password before
>>and had the same problem, but don't remember what I did.
>>
>>All help is appreciated.
> 
> 
> In all the time I've administered Linux/Unix I've not seen this error. The 
> following may help.
> 
>>From a posting on UseNet via google:
> 
> http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=200105032006.QAA06053%40kuznets.fas.harvard.edu&rnum=5&prev=/groups%3Fas_epq%3Dpasswd%253A%2520Authentication%2520token%2520manipulation%2520error%26safe%3Dimages%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26lr%3D%26hl%3Den
> 
> 
>  Does the file /etc/shadow exhist?  The default install of Red
> Hat uses shadow passwords, and I think what may be happening in that
> qhen they try and change the password, there is no entry for the user in
> /etc/shadow, so pam has problems.  Backup /etc/shadow, and /etc/passwd.
> The delete /etc/shadow, and run pwconv to convert your password file to
> shadow passwords.  If this fixes the problem, you will also want to run
> grpconv.
> 
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