Unusual Group Error (I think)
 

I had everything running great but then I noticed that my FTP server (ProFTPD) was allowing
users to list every file on my server so I thought I'd lock down the server by modifying /etc/group- and adding an FTPUsers group and lock all those users to path /server/files.
I added a line saying FTPUsers:x:1010:user1:user2:user3 and then I used vipw to modify the /home paths of these users to /server/files. Once I made these changes my Telnet server booted my connection and I have been refused connection via telnet and FTP ever since. When I rebooted the system I get some strange errors (cannot find group - error in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf) and now I have to manually initiate Xwindows to get it to load. I can see the telnet and FTP servers are running but they're refusing all connections. I figured I could uninstall/re-install both these packages. Both these uninstalls worked fine but the re-installs error out with dpkg : sysntax error : unknown group 'postdrop' in statusoverride file E: sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned error code (2).

The only 2 files I modified were /etc/passwd (via vipw) and /etc/group- and I only made the tiny modifications listed above. Is Linux typically this fickle? Like a jackass I didn't make a backup of /etc/group- before I added that one line. Other than slicking and reloading yet again (which I really don't want to do!) what can I do here? I'm using Libranet, I wouldn't suppose there is some kind of recovery process that will restore the system state back to installation defaults (without reformatting and loosing my File Server data)? Both telnet, FTP, and samba (which still works fine) are the services that
I absolutly have to have up and running 24/7.

Thanks,
T$

You have a syntax error in your /etc/group entry that caught my eye. The group members need to be separated by commas instead of colons.