New to linux and i have two (basic) problems..

**acb460acb** · 12-24-2003

Ok i am new to linux and i think i screwed something up already..

First i think i deleted the root account?! When i go to the user and groups panel ut says unknown user.. i can't login as root neither..

Second.. I screwed up the panels somehow.. I liked how in the beginning it had the bottom panel with the four workspaces and the redhat button. Now i just have one bar on the top (kind of like mac os 9)

I am running Linux Redhat 9 .

Thanks for any of your help.

**Dolda2000** · 12-24-2003

I'm not sure those are really symptoms that you have deleted your root account. Many login programs prevent root logins (since you're not supposed to log in as root), and the users and groups thing that RH has made usually doesn't show system accounts (those with UID<100, root has UID=0). If you run "su -" from a terminal, doesn't that work with your root password?

It sounds as if you simply want to move your panel, right? If this is GNOME that we're talking about, just right-click the panel and choose the position where you want it to be.

**acb460acb** · 12-25-2003

I also can't do anything under the system settings... everytime i try to go to something under system settings it gives me the same error... unknown user. I was able to login to root until i screwed it up... now it just doesn't accept the password. Is there a way i can recreate a root account or an account with root capabilities? I imagine i would have to do this inside the command line since i keep getting the error on the graphical interface? When I type SU into the terminal it says "su: user root does not exist"

**Dolda2000** · 12-25-2003

Then, how much is screwed up? Would you mind posting your /etc/passwd (don't worry, the passwords aren't in there; they are in /etc/shadow)?

**acb460acb** · 12-25-2003

well i can't get onto anything under the system tools or run any rpms by clicking on them. I am new to linux so i have nothing important on the linux portion of this computer or in certain accounts so destroying/creating accouts doesn't bother me at all... what information do you need? just tell me where i can find it and i will tell you... and thanks i was able to get my interface back just the way i like it.. i love how much more customizable it is than windows.
---- here is what that file has that you asked--- ( i just changed my last name)-----------
om

:500:0:Tom Smith:/home/tom:/bin/bash
bin

:1:1:bin:/bin:/sbin/nologin
daemon

:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/sbin/nologin
adm

:3:4:adm:/var/adm:/sbin/nologin
lp

:4:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/sbin/nologin
sync

:5:0:sync:/sbin:/bin/sync
shutdown

:6:0:shutdown:/sbin:/sbin/shutdown
halt

:7:0:halt:/sbin:/sbin/halt
mail

:8:12:mail:/var/spool/mail:/sbin/nologin
news

:9:13:news:/etc/news:
uucp

:10:14:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/sbin/nologin
operator

:11:0:operator:/root:/sbin/nologin
games

:12:100:games:/usr/games:/sbin/nologin
gopher

:13:30:gopher:/var/gopher:/sbin/nologin
ftp

:14:50:FTP User:/var/ftp:/sbin/nologin
nobody

:99:99:Nobody:/:/sbin/nologin
rpm

:37:37::/var/lib/rpm:/bin/bash
vcsa

:69:69:virtual console memory owner:/dev:/sbin/nologin
nscd

:28:28:NSCD Daemon:/:/sbin/nologin
sshd

:74:74:Privilege-separated SSH:/var/empty/sshd:/sbin/nologin
rpc

:32:32:Portmapper RPC user:/:/sbin/nologin
rpcuser

:29:29:RPC Service User:/var/lib/nfs:/sbin/nologin
nfsnobody

:65534:65534:Anonymous NFS User:/var/lib/nfs:/sbin/nologin
mailnull

:47:47::/var/spool/mqueue:/sbin/nologin
smmsp

:51:51::/var/spool/mqueue:/sbin/nologin
pcap

:77:77::/var/arpwatch:/sbin/nologin
xfs

:43:43:X Font Server:/etc/X11/fs:/sbin/nologin
ntp

:38:38::/etc/ntp:/sbin/nologin
gdm

:42:42::/var/gdm:/sbin/nologin
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Dolda2000** · 12-25-2003

Indeed the root account is gone. I can't help wondering whatever you could have done to cause that without altering the rest of the file.

Anyway, to fix it, you need to boot the system in single user mode. Since you're using RH9, I'm assuming that your boot loader is GRUB (RH9 installs GRUB by default, so if you haven't explicitly changed it, it is GRUB).
When you boot your system and see the nice menu that allows you to choose which O/S to boot, press "e" to edit the GRUB boot commands. Select the line that begins with "kernel", press "e" again to edit that one, and add a space and a 1 to the end of that line. Press enter to acknowledge that changes made to the line, and then press "b" to boot.
When the system has booted into single user mode, you should get a prompt that reads something like "sh-2.05b#". Enter the following commands, exactly as they read. Do not proceed if any of them fails

Code:

mount -n -o remount,rw /
echo 'root&#58;x&#58;0&#58;0&#58;root&#58;/root&#58;/bin/bash' >>/etc/passwd
sort -t &#58; -k 3n /etc/passwd >/etc/passwd.new
mv -f /etc/passwd.new /etc/passwd
passwd root

The last command will ask you for a password. Enter the password that you want root to have.
Then, after that, run "telinit 5" to continue booting the system into full multi-user operation.

**acb460acb** · 12-25-2003

ok everything went good until i got to

Code:

mv -f /etc/passwd.net /etc/passwd

when i entered that i got this..

Code:

mv&#58; can't stat source /etc/passwd.net

ok.. now instead of giving me the unknown user error when using linux it asks me for the root password (which i didn't make yet)

**Dolda2000** · 12-25-2003

Sorry, typo. It should be passwd.new, not passwd.net. Sorry about that. Original post edited to correctness.

**acb460acb** · 12-25-2003

ok.. i changed passwd.net to passwd.new which worked.. than i did passwd root but got an error authentication token manipulation error..... hahah i just read your post now.. i thought that might be it when i went back.. so i tried it and it worked but got this token manipulation error

**Dolda2000** · 12-25-2003

Is that so? Could it be that you ran the preceeding commands again? You should not have run the echo command twice (I should have mentioned that). If you did that, it is fortunately rather easy to remedy. Run these commands to fix such a situation:

Code:

sort /etc/passwd | uniq >/etc/passwd.new
mv -f /etc/passwd.new /etc/passwd

If that was not the case, or if you do the above and still get that error, I will need some log dumps to debug the error. For messages to be logged to begin with, you must start the syslog daemon before attempting to set the password. Do that with this command:

Code:

/sbin/service syslog start

After that, when you have attempted to change the password, get the log dump using this command:

Code:

tail -20 /var/log/&#123;messages,secure&#125;

To easily save the output for inclusion, you can modify the command like this:

Code:

tail -20 /var/log/&#123;messages,secure&#125; >/tmp/logdump

The output will then be saved in /tmp/logdump so that you can simply open that file and copy/paste when you reply.

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