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Hi! I'm a newbie, but I thought that the question I have might go better in this forum. I just installed RedHat 9 for the first time and tried to create some new users. I ran into some stiff problems, and here they are:
I can run passwd fine as root.
Then, just adding references to the new users in /etc/passwd & /etc/group worked to create the new users, but when I ran passwd as root with their names, and when I logged on as them and ran passwd, it allowed me to type in the new passwords but returned this message:
"passwd: User not known to the underlying authentication module "
I apoligize for my bad english, but I'm mad sleepy.
Next I tried the adduser command. Again, it added users. When I used the -p (password) switch it also created users. But when I tried to log on as these users with the password, even though I know it was the same, I was told it was "incorrect."
Finally, I tried to run the add new users dialog in X. When nothing happenned, I found the script it pointed to: /usr/bin/redhat-config-users or something like that. I ran this from the terminal and had a lot of pythonish program-breaking (useful and informative) garbage being thrown back at me.
I then turned the computer off in frustration, but if you need the exact message I can power it up and run it again tomorrow, but now I must sleep.
Thanks for any help possible,
Phil Hughes
--p.s. I'm having a worse day now that I realized I misspelled my username -- dammit! it should be (l.windthorst)
Thanks a whole lot! I look forward to the day I can hang out here and help out some new guys.
One last thing, though, if you have any time -- why did that work, and what was I doing wrong before. I remember while installing there was a prompt that said "shadow passwords" somewhere, but neither of my two books nor anything I found online mentioned that my choice there had an impact on how I could add/delete users and their passwords.
shadow passwords are stored in /etc/shadow instead of /etc/passwd which is encrypted but readable by everyone. this also helps with passwords which have a length more than 8.
so you should add to /etc/shadow if you have enabled that
The other thing to remember about the useradd -p option, at least in RedHat 9.0, is that it puts an unencrypted password in the password field in /etc/shadow when the account is created, which doesn't work well from a security standpoint.
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