I'm afraid I don't fully understand what you are trying to achieve. Can you try to be more specific? What are you trying to do and what is happening or not happening? Which distribution are you running?
You can manually reset a password in /etc/shadow
Read this:
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...for-etc-shadow and you might want to read some of the manpages (perhaps on another linux machine if yours isn't working)
Code:
username@host:~$ man -k shadow
endspent (3) - get shadow password file entry
fgetspent (3) - get shadow password file entry
fgetspent_r (3) - get shadow password file entry
getspent (3) - get shadow password file entry
getspent_r (3) - get shadow password file entry
getspnam (3) - get shadow password file entry
getspnam_r (3) - get shadow password file entry
gpasswd (1) - administer /etc/group and /etc/gshadow
grpconv (8) - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups
grpunconv (8) - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups
gshadow (5) - shadowed group file
lckpwdf (3) - get shadow password file entry
login.defs (5) - shadow password suite configuration
putspent (3) - get shadow password file entry
pwconv (8) - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups
pwunconv (8) - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups
setspent (3) - get shadow password file entry
sgetspent (3) - get shadow password file entry
sgetspent_r (3) - get shadow password file entry
shadow (5) - shadowed password file
shadowconfig (8) - toggle shadow passwords on and off
ulckpwdf (3) - get shadow password file entry
update-passwd (8) - safely update /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/group
vigr (8) - edit the password, group, shadow-password or shadow-group file
vipw (8) - edit the password, group, shadow-password or shadow-group file
vos_shadow (1) - Creates a shadow copy of a volume on a different server/partition
username@host:~$ man 5 shadow
Other than that?
- Try tailing your log files in /var/log* (syslog, message, debug, secure, daemon, ... ).
- Have a look at /etc/fstab? Is your root partition set up to remount RO if errors are detected?
- What does mount -l show?
- Is your root mounted as RO?
- What does dmesg spit out?
- Put the exact message between quotes in some search engine of your choice. I'm sure there will be a solution to your answer.