can't passwd

leihsun · 06-17-2002, 03:11 AM

hi can you help me regarding my problem .... i think that you know this problem
to and im hoping that you have the answer ....:

Every time I try to change passwords, this error appears..

[root@mail /root]# passwd
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: Critical error - immediate abort

and also in login

login(pam_unix)[230]:session opened for user root by LOGIN(uid=0)

linuxcool · 06-17-2002, 04:21 AM

What is the distribution and version number you are using?

Check to see that you haven't run out of disk space.

Did you su to root and try to change the password?

leihsun · 06-17-2002, 05:12 AM

I use RedHat 7.1

I am sure I haven't run out of disk space.

I am login as root and if I change passwd, the system also shows "Critical error - immediate abort"

jayakrishnan · 06-17-2002, 05:29 AM

`may be your root partition "/" is full

leihsun · 06-17-2002, 07:55 PM

Can't be. I only use about 50% of hard disk.

jayakrishnan · 06-18-2002, 02:25 AM

not your harddisk your "/" partition

leihsun · 06-18-2002, 02:38 AM

sorry, I mean / not hard disk, the usage of / is about 50%, and only 100M partitioned for /.

jayakrishnan · 06-18-2002, 02:47 AM

This is the main reason why you get the error

leihsun · 06-18-2002, 03:23 AM

sorry what reason? My / is not full. Still is the problem?

jayakrishnan · 06-18-2002, 04:20 AM

Never came across this kind of problem

Mik · 06-18-2002, 04:23 AM

Well it looks like an irritating problem. Maybe running passwd with strace will help you find out where it's going wrong. Try running:

strace -o trace.out passwd

Then scan through the trace.out file and find out where it's stopping. If you don't know what all that output is maybe just posting the bit with the error will get someone to help you out.

Just another thing:
The trace file will contain your password in clear text. So if you post parts of the file then blank out your password or skip that part.

jayakrishnan · 06-18-2002, 04:24 AM

do your /etc/pam.d dir has passwd file

jayakrishnan · 06-18-2002, 04:27 AM

I cam upon a website which had a user forum and one of the person had asked the same questions.

the answer given was that this happens when some one hacks into your system

leihsun · 06-18-2002, 05:24 AM

sorry, i didn't figure out what is my system. I built an embedded system. I mean, I use fdisk, mke2fs, and copy needed files. So I guess I haven't copy completely. And now here comes the problems. If my guess is right, then which files is needed by password system? If I am wrong, then what is going on to my system?

Mik · 06-18-2002, 05:49 AM

Well it first checks the file /etc/nsswitch.conf to find out where it should look to retrieve the password. If it's set to files then it will look for the file /etc/passwd if you are also using shadow passwords then you will need the /etc/shadow file.

As far as I know those are the main ones you need. If you've got all those then I'd really try an strace. It's not that much work and it will tell you exactly where it goes wrong. Saves you the trouble of guessing what may be missing.