Strange: "passwd: System error" after squeeze (testing) install

[Daan]

The strangest thing happened. I installed Debian testing with the "squeeze Alpha1" netinstall cd. All seemed to go well and the installer made me pick a root password and create a normal user account. However, after the first boot my user account did not work and I could also not login as root, it looked liked I forgot the passwords for both accounts. When rebooted in recovery mode, I got

sulogin: root account is locked

and I was automatically logged in as root without being asked for a password. Then I found out that the normal user account does not exist. I created a user acount and logged into it. I did passwd to set a password, but I got

passwd: Authentication token manipulation error

Also, there was no home directory for the new user. Reinstalling passwd did not help.
What's going on?

[mfeighan]

hey daan, i think i had the same problem
i also tried adduser in recovery mode to make my account, it created a home dir but failed on creating a password,
in the /etc/shadow it added a user but the password part didn't work as it should usually be some encrypted jibberish but was just a '!'

foo:!:14074:0:99999:7:::

the workaround i did was copy a working /etc/group and /etc/shadow from another linuxbox i am running rebooted and my root password & normal login password now works again

the down side is something is still broken as when i try to change the password now i still get an error

$ passwd 
Changing password for foo.
(current) UNIX password: 
passwd: System error
passwd: password unchanged

edit* after closer inspection of my /var/log/auth/log i got

passwd[2096]: pam_winbind(passwd:chauthtok): valid_user: wbcGetpwnam gave WBC_ERR_DOMAIN_NOT_FOUND

i found this to be the solution to my problem, hope this helps
bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/samba/+bug/545864

[LComputer]

I've encountered the same problem with the netinstaller-cd from SQUEZZE.
I realized in the end that just some pam-modules are missing:

following one had to be installed to allow passsword-handling:
libpam-modules
libpam-unix2
libpam-runtime
libpam-pwdfile
libpam-cracklib

For axplanation:

The strange message from passwd is generateg because the program tries to authenticated the user but the "files"-module is not working so he is falling back to the next method (which is for example winbind or something like that). Normally after installation this module is not right configured and not working.

Hope I could help you

Chris

PS: If the terrain disagree with the map - trust the terrain!

[Daan]

Thanks for your replies.

I've tried installing the pam stuff, but I couldn't because apt gave me some error that it couldn't find something suggesting that roots PATH is not correct.

Then I tried installing Debian testing from the weekly snapshot CD. I got the same problem with my user not being created, but now I could install the pam stuff (only two were installed, the rest was there already). However, I get the same "System error" when trying to set roots password with passwd.

[Daan]

I tried reconfiguring libpam-runtime as described in the link supplies by mfeighan (afte useradd), and then I got a new error: "Authentication token manipulation error". Then I rebooted and re-reconfigured libpam-runtime, this time also disabling cracklib password strength checker. No I could set roots passwd. Normal user could not set his password, however, root could set normal users password.

[cla1067]

I have same exact problem. Clean install of squeeze I386.

mfeighan link fixed the password issue for me and I am able to log into users in ssh, but when I add a user it wont create a home directory, so I don't have any home directories. Anyone have a fix? :/

[cla1067]

everything works now

I downloaded the daily snapshot of squeeze, wiped hard drive again, removed grub (went into windows repair and typed: fixmbr ), and installed squeeze. During installation it said that it couldn't mount swap, so I erased the data on that partition. Then after installation couldn't login because the passwords weren't working, so I did the "sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow libpam-runtime" and unchecked "Winbind NT/Active Directory authentication". Then I had to create my normal user account again (It didn't create during installation) and redo the password for root in rescue mode because I couldn't access root terminal.

well anyways that's what I did and it finally works. The swap thing scared me though...

Thanks