Hi guys,

So I just upgraded my ubuntu machine to 9.10 and when I try to change my password with passwd it says,

similarly if I try to su to another user I receive:

I did some research and it looks like most of the time this problem is caused by the file system being in read-only mode vs read-write so I did:

but this didn't fix the problem. Any ideas?

In Ubuntu you are not meant to have the password for user root. Access to suer-user privileges are through sudo. If you bypassed that rule in the previous install, the upgrade has possibly reverted to defaults...

I am not trying to su to root, just to another user because I have two accounts on the computer. The real problem to me though is more the inability to change my password either through the command line or the gui. If I try to do it through system > administration > users and groups> I can't unlock the accounts to edit them even though I do have sudo privileges. It returns with authentication failed but the password is correct because it works when I try to sudo something on the command line. If any of this is vague I apologize let me know and I will try to clear it up.
Thanks for your help

Some thoughts: is the behaviour the same in CLI ?
What is /var/log/auth.log say?
Any PAM issues ?
Finally, could try a workaround by booting into a live CD. Then mount root filesystem and edit the /etc/shadow file and remove the password for the user. Not a very elegant solution, but might work (should allow password change on subsequent boot).