Hi,

I cannot login as root or any other root in my machine, it gives me an authentication token manipulation error, it also doesnot write to the logs so i cannot fine out wat the error is.

the owner and permission of the files are the deafult values.

please can anyone tell me how to get around this,
i cannot post the logs coz it has been wiped.


Regards

Do a password recovery for root. I believe the error means that it has a problem reading from passwd or shadow. You might have changed or modified it so that there is an extra : maybe?

I logged in single user mode and tried the passwd command but it give me an
authenitcation token manipulation error

Im pretty sure that means that somethings wrong with your passwd file. Make a backup of your /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files and run pwck.

PWCK(1) PWCK(1)

NAME
pwck - verify integrity of password files

SYNOPSIS
pwck [-sr] [passwd shadow]

DESCRIPTION
pwck verifies the integrity of the system authentication information.
All entries in the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow are checked to see that
the entry has the proper format and valid data in each field. The
user is prompted to delete entries that are improperly formatted or
which have other incorrectable errors.

Checks are made to verify that each entry has

- the correct number of fields
- a unique user name
- a valid user and group identifier
- a valid primary group
- a valid home directory
- a valid login shell