Hi everyone! I could definitely use some assistance. I'm stuck right now. I can't login into my machine and I can't reset the password. When I type passwd admin at the command line I receive the following error:

passwd: Module is unknown

Has anyone seen this before? If so how can I change my password so I can log into my machine normal?

Ok, I'm confused

You say you cannot login?

If you have a prompt then you are logged in.


Are you logged in as root?

Is there a user named admin that you cannot log into any more?

try /usr/bin/passwd admin

What distro did you say your using?

I'm confused? You say you cann't login you into you machine? How are you getting to the command line?

Which password? The standard user account you created for yourself or root?

I am consoled into my machine with monitor and keyboard and rebooted the machine into single user mode. That's why I'm at a command prompt. But if I try and log in normal it will not except any password, when I go in through single user mode and try to change the password then I receive the error:

passwd: Module is unknown

I apologize for the confusion.

Did you try using the path/command that DavidPhillips,
suggested?

Are you mounting /usr from different parititoin?
Single user mode only mount the root device i.e.


/dev/hda1 /
/dev/hda2 /usr

Single user mode (init 1) only /dev/hda1 will be mounted?
If that is the case you'lll have to mount /dev/hda2 /usr

depending on your distro look in /var/log/messages

or /var/log/warn


maybe some clue about the problem


try this

tail -f /var/log/messages



then in another terminal try the passwd command

One other question? Did you create the admin account youself? That sound like account created by the system for its's use?

Post the output from these commnads please:
grep -i admin /etc/passwd
grep -i admin/etc/shadow

I did try /usr/bin/passwd admin, and same result.
passwd: Module is unknown


I tailed the messages log when running the command and no error or reply was displayed.


The return of the two commands grep -i admin /etc/passwd and
grep -i admin/etc/shadow are as follows:

grep -i admin /etc/passwd

admin:x:110:27:Administrator:/home/sites/home/users/admin/bin/bash

grep -i admin/etc/shadow

admin:11874:0:99999:7:::

This is my buddies machine, he said he did not make any changes. I checked the .bash_history and nothing noticable was displayed.

What distro is you buddy running?
This sure looks like a system account, and not a user acccount
What happens if you try to su - admin?
look at /etc/group and see what "27" is assigned to?


Neither of these look right to me

There isn't any passwd listed in /etc/shadow?

use (as root)
vipw
and compare the admin entry to other user accounts

one problem is that the colon is missing between the home folder and the /bin/bash

admin:x:110:27:Administrator:/home/sites/home/users/admin:/bin/bash

DavidPhilps --
What do you thinks about the shadow file?
Does this look like a system account to you?

OK I justed check /etc/passwd and /etc/group on RH7.2
Any group id <= 100 used by the system.

Any user id < 500 is used by the system

The admin account you listed has a userid of 110 and a group id of 27? This would suggest this is systems account?

And system accounts aren't supposed to have valid logins.

Which would explain why /etc/passwd looks os funky?

Ask you buddy if he/she crearted this login? If not don't touch it.

that's how it looks to me

All users will be > 499

See my post re: my little bundle of joy

Nope my buddy did not create the login and I didn't touch anything. I know how easily I can screw something. Basically I came over to my buddies house and he said the he was trying to login to his machine and could not do so. He said he didn't change anything, which of course is hard to believe, because how can this just happen. Who knows?

Any ways...this is a cobalt RaQ 4 server running RedHat 6.2

So neither of you have seen this return before? I can't find much on google.com/linux either. Crazy.