Slackware 14: Can not log in, root and users not recognized

Nitrogen1 · 09-26-2013, 01:17 PM

Hello guys,
I'm a novice user with slackware and I found a problem with my distribution slackware 14 (3.2.45). Using the kde desktop manager with two user sessions, in the transition from one session to another, the system does not recognize the passwords of both users (root and myuser) so I rebooted the machine. Booting Slackware from LILO several errors appear, but among these I can read only one "unknown user 'root' in bus configuration file". Result, I can no longer access with none of the two users. Being a novice user how can I fix it or at least log in to troubleshoot the problem?
I apologize for my bad english, thanks in advance.

jostber · 09-26-2013, 01:40 PM

Can you post some errors that appear?

NoStressHQ · 09-26-2013, 02:07 PM

How did you change your root password ? And how did you add the other user account ?

To do some forensics you can boot with Slackware Install DVD and mount your partition under /mnt, then you can check your /mnt/etc/passwd and /mnt/etc/shadow files to see if they're well formed.

Nitrogen1 · 09-27-2013, 04:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jostber

Can you post some errors that appear?

In which file can i find them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoStressHQ

How did you change your root password ? And how did you add the other user account ?

To do some forensics you can boot with Slackware Install DVD and mount your partition under /mnt, then you can check your /mnt/etc/passwd and /mnt/etc/shadow files to see if they're well formed.

I changed them using the 'passwd' and 'adduser' commands. Running a live distro i noticed that in the shadow file there is a password for root but at the login i can't access.

Didier Spaier · 09-27-2013, 05:16 AM

Probably you changed a keyboard map.

Try to boot at runlevel 3 (When you see lilo's boot screen, press [Tab] then type e.g. "Linux 3") then log in as a regular user. If that works type "startx".

Please tell us what you have in /etc/rc.keymap, and if you have a file called /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-keyboard-layout.conf, what's the "XkbLayout" setting.

Also IIRC KDE stores its kernel keyboard map elsewhere, unfortunately I'm not a KDE user, please someone remind us where if that's actually the case.

Last resort, erase root's password in /etc/shadow.

zrdc28 · 09-30-2013, 09:49 AM

This is just a thought since it happened to me last week, could your caps lock be on now or when you added the passwords?

Skaperen · 09-30-2013, 10:56 AM

If the system does not boot up and the messages are only on the screen, about the only way to post them is with a camera image. To do maintenance/fixes on such a system, you can boot from the DVD and mount the hard drive's root filesystem. Not only check if the right files are present and have the right content, also be sure their permissions, and the permissions of all directories above, all the way to "/", are correct.