Hey guys and gals,

I was trying to add a new user to the Termsioc (University Of Plymouth CS) servers and change my passwords, but I'm getting these weird messages on a couple of commands as a result:

When I adduser or useradd:
I type in

./adduser <username>

and it replies:

adduser: cannot rewrite password file

When I passwd my root, after going through typing a new password, it replies:

passwd: dlopen() failure

and finally, when I try to passwd my username, it replies:

passwd: Authentification token manipulation error

I don't think these commands have been used for several months, so I'm not sure when the problem could have developed. Something I do know is that the previous admin for the box installed Fedora on it by simply changing the mirrors in apt-get whilst running RH9.

Thanks!

Rich Jeffery
Termisoc President

No answer, then?

Still having the same problem.

THIS IS AN EMERGENCY SITUATION, AS UNTIL IT IS FIXED WE CANNOT ADD, REMOVE USERS OR CHANGE ANY PASSWORDS!

HELP!!!!

We've tried moving the passwd and shadow files to .old, but the problem still remains. Ocassionally, the passwd files update anyway, but it only half bakes them, so they still aren't users.

actually i have a similar issue ...
in my case i can add a user, a group, set the 1st password, but i cannot change it later ... i get the error we see above
and i would really like to know the answer since i have the policy to change my passwd once in a while ...

--baronlynx--

The problem is now sorted.

The reason why it occurred was that the linux-secure package (or something similar involving extra-secure linux) had gotten installed. This meant that the adduser and passwd commands behaved totally differently.

Removing this package will solve the problem as far as I'm aware.

To add a new user under FC3 running SE Linux:

restorecon /etc/passwd /etc/shadow
useradd <user>
passwd <user>

If passwd fails try repeating lines 1 and 3.