We use an older Caldera Open Linux distro using KDE for a simple webserver here at our schooldistrict

I went to add an account using the GUI (Caldera Admin -> System -> accounts)
Added a user...the group looked wrong (matched the UID) and I wanted to place them in "teachers" - so i went to edit the user and the window closed on its own.

I tried to reopen it, but it said that it was already in use...so I tried rebooting the system...

Unfortunately, now I try to login with "root", and it is saying invalid password

Oh where to start?

(I'm a fairly big linux newbie... so if you make suggestions please list out full commands or things I can google heh)

Thanks!

try using the password that you assigned the new user when attempting to login as root...

I didnt assign a password (it was blank)


I can, however, login to bash$ using the new user, but the user cant do passwd root becuase it isnt su

I try to su, and it says invalid password

In this case I would mount the system's HD on a different linux system and modify the shadow/passwd file to fix this... Could also try using single user mode to do this too but I have a feeling that this won't work...

I am not familiar with that version of linux so I cannot tell you where to find this, but look in your shadow file and see if the root login is blank. What I am thinking is that some how the root password got blown away. most systems won't let you login to a root account when there isn't a password.

trying to vi /etc/shadow says access denied locally...

I suppose removing the hard drive is going to be a last resort..i dont want to propose that to my super until absolutely necessary

Try booting to single user mode so you can give root a new password. With lilo highlight kernel, hit tab, type 1 and hit enter. With grub highlight kernel, hit e, type 1, hit b.
Then just type passwd and type it in twice. Then you can either reboot or switch to another runlevel with for instance init 5.

what he said...

Well, tab was the key i was looking for
I typed in "linux single" when ti asked what to boot
it then gave me a prompt saying CTRL D or password for maintence after it said root password is invalid
so i typed in the password and it gave me a prompt (with #)

I tried passwd first, and it said unable to et username
so i tried passwd root
typed in password twice

and i got

PAM_pwdb[106]: user(root/0) update failed; pwdb: another process has locked resource
passwd: Critical error - immediate abort

Hmm, strange. Try deleting /etc/passwd.lock if it exists.

theres /etc/passwd and /etc/passwd-

but no /etc/passwd.lock

I know not to delete /passwd but what about passwd- ?

Move /etc/passwd- to another directory to be sure, but probably deleting it works.
Also check if shadow.lock exists, delete if yes. If shadow- is there, move it out of the way as well, to roots home or where ever.

okay, there was a shadow.lock - i remounted the filesystem (mount -o remount,rw / ) then rm shadow.lock

then passwd root (
password twice

worked fine....rebooted and logged in just fine!!!!!!

THANKS!

glad it worked out.

Phase II:

I reloaded KDE, logged in as root and went to the user manager

I cant edit or delete users, it is citing that it cnanot lock the user database

is there somewhere else I need to go to ensure that this can properly occur?

is there an easier command line to adding/deleting users?

I usually use adduser. "adduser newusername" adds a user, "adduser username somegroupname" adds that user to a group.
useradd is another command but imho adduser is simpler.