Hi,
I just finished building the Sysvinit version of the Cross-LFS book. I'm trying to change the root password, but the passwd utility doesn't prompt me to enter a new one.
It merely displays the above message and exits. Have I missed a step somewhere? Thanks.

Did root have a password? Does root have a functioning password now?

No, I hadn't set a password for root previously, and hence doesn't have one now. I don't think I've ever set the root password during the build process; only after all packages have finished installing. Do you mean after installing shadow? But then, I haven't enabled shadowed passwords.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I should have worded my question properly. I'm trying to "set" a new password for root, not change.

I'd make that my first step, if you're able. I don't think the SE module in the Linux kernel isn't going to allow root level access without shadow password being enabled.

SE module? Isn't that an SELinux utility? Also, I should be able to effect a change from within the chroot, surely, kernel security policies notwithstanding.

No, it a set of kernel level security policies that most of the distros kernels use.
'Let's hope so, because I can't see how you're getting out of this if you can't.
But then again the last time a Slackware zombie faced this problem was back when you had to compile the code from source. EDIT: This actually routinely happens if you upgrade with the wrong architecture by accident and the rare instances shadow password becomes corrupted.
I'm always impressed with the willingness of some folks to compile all that code by hand, can you tell me why someone would use Linux From Scratch? I'm sure it's a great distro and you'd probably learn a lot installing it if you weren't familiar with the configure->make->make-instal->install sequence (which Slackware still uses in many cases BTW), but I know, just from adding packages to a good install, it can be time consuming process and the outcome is by no means guaranteed

semodule is an SELinux module manager, which is what I thought you were referring to, and your URL carries the search term "selinux module", as well. SELinux support is enabled in many distro kernels, but is not enabled by default in the vanilla kernel (I think). Even if it were enabled, they wouldn't take effect until userspace tools were used to set the policies. And even if such policies had been implemented, I'm building inside a chroot environment, the point of which is to keep the host system's configuration from messing with a clean build. It would be pointless to build the basic tools if the host system were to interfere in the process (Do correct me if I'm wrong, though, becasue I've never worked with SELinux). I may add that my host system doesn't have SELinux enabled.

I have certainly learnt a lot about gnu/linux systems by building C/B/LFS. Compiling from source is actually quite a mundane activity if you are well versed with the process, and have a proper build enviroment set up. That's why I have scripted the process to save time. I also have a package manager and a basic installer which make the task much easier. When I first started out with LFS, of course I had to put in time and effort to get things right, but it was much simpler than actually bootstrapping an OS from scratch, with a bootable hex editor and keying in machine code Most modern distros have accumulated a lot of fat, with an unbelievable number of dependencies, which I wish to avoid. I just run my build script at night, and have a workable system ready when I get up in the morning, so it's not as if I'm spending a lot of time building it.

Well, thanks for telling me that, I always wondered.
Good luck with your 'unable to set root password' problem, you might want to check in the pile of "bloat" you stripped out for the answer.

I did find the answer to my problem; an errant CFLAG in my build script, which enabled strong buffer protection. Thank you for your replies, though. Hope you enjoyed your snark with a pile of "bloat". I hope it was "testy".