All Users borked

floppywhopper · 05-19-2008, 06:55 PM

This isn't a cry for help as the only way I can see to fix this is to completely reload mandriva but....

All users including root have been deleted from the system.
On normal boot it just fails.
In safe mode it boots to single user but nobody can do anything.

During normal bootup I see all these error messages saying to the effect
>>user not found
>>group not found

so my question is
how could this have possible happened

it hasn't been on the net lately...

my only thoughts are perhaps a bad HDD

I am ( was ) using Mandriva 2008 free on this system.

regards
floppy

jschiwal · 05-19-2008, 07:10 PM

Do the /etc/passwd, /etc/group and /etc/shadow files exist?

Also check the permissions on this files if they exist. There are system users as well, and from your bootup messages it sounds like they can't be found either. If the permissions got borked, you can fix it with chmod. If they were deleted, then restore them from a backup. If it is a hard drive problem, then it may need to be replaced.

Code:

ls -l /etc/passwd /etc/shadow /etc/group
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    749 2008-04-26 06:33 /etc/group
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   1527 2008-04-26 06:33 /etc/passwd
-rw-r----- 1 root shadow  895 2008-04-26 06:33 /etc/shadow

aus9 · 05-19-2008, 07:16 PM

I assume you can not login?

try booting a live cd, and checking the hard drives /var/log/syslog and auth.log for possible unusual activities.

sysresccd has chkrootkit but you have to make sure you mount the partitions in a certain way to scan the hard drive

eg

su
mkdir /z
mount -t /dev/hda2 /z
mount -t /dev/hda1 /z/boot
mount -t /dev/hda3 /z/usr

then scan /z

2) on a probable rebuild, can I suggest you install rootkit hunter and have a daily mail report?

http://sourceforge.net/projects/rkhunter/

GlennsPref · 05-22-2008, 05:35 AM

While you have the live cd, backup the stuff you want to keep.

If it's a newly (fresh) install, perhaps something was missed.

I would do a reinstall with the mandriva dvd, fisrt with the upgrade option,

if that fails try a reinstall without formatting.

If you want to try and recover any info/data from the disks, try testdisk's photorec (photo recover).

You will need a spare partition equal or larger than the data "drive" you want to recover.

It can be done.

floppywhopper · 05-22-2008, 10:31 PM

Just thought I would reply

First of all thanks to those who tried to offer help
but without being able to login, even as root it was impossible to do anything
Unfortunately I don't have a rescue disk and I'm on dial-up
so a repair job was impracticable

I have completely wiped that drive of Linux ( it was a dual-boot anyway )
dropped in a new 160 G HDD and loaded Mandriva onto that.
There was no data worth rescuing anyway.

Anyway I posted this mainly to see if others had had this problem or if others have this problem in the future maybe we can compare notes.

One of the error messages that came up was the suggestion that it may be a fault in the D-Bus whatever that is. It seems that all users and groups had just vanished..... UFOś ???

The install had been working fine for weeks with no apparent problem before this suddenly happened. There were no additions or alterations to the Mandriva install immediately before this happened however as it was a dual-boot I had recently downloaded an update to AVG anti-virus on the windows install. I had wondered if this may have caused some problems.

That was Mandriva 2008 free and I am now running 2008 powerpack, both from magazine covers. The free version was from a Linux Format magazine and the powerpack from Linux Magazine. Actually I have had a lot of problems with Linux Format disks not working properly.

Thanks again
regards
floppy

billymayday · 05-22-2008, 11:26 PM

Can't help on your problem, but this will tell you about D-BUS

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus

GlennsPref · 05-22-2008, 11:50 PM

As far as I know, nothing in windows (M$) should be able to do anything like that.

Even antivirus programs.

There are some new programs for porting x programs to windows, But I'm still to research that aspect.

It is certainly strange behaviour, indeed!

cheers, and thanks for posting, Glenn

aus9 · 05-23-2008, 08:01 AM

floppy

I have stopped using linuxformat for the same reason....they post out dvds in a flimsy bit of paper admittedly between the mag sheets but there are many posts at LXF on the subject.

If I can seduce you to look at
http://internode.broadbandguide.com....ny/cheap/plans

I am in Perth and this is my plan.....testmy.net gives me 50 kilobytes per sec from a non-internode server.

broadband forum...or phone thinks highly of node
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

2) why am I suggesting internode???? because all my linux iso downloads are unmetered from their mirrors including 4.3 G stuff....sava da money if you can afford $40 pm