On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 12:42:11PM +0100, rdermody at lexmark.com wrote:
> I found why I was getting "User root does not exist" when I was su-ing to root.
> It was because I accidently modified the root entry in etc/passwd when I was
> adding some users. But now I cant edit the file back to its original because I
> need to have su rights and cant edit the file......any ideas anybody?.
You've had lots of suggestions about booting single user and so on, all of
which are fine but there may be a much simpler solution. You say you
modified the root entry in etc/passwd - if modified means removed :-) then
you must follow some of the previous hints. However, if modify means that
you changed root's name e.g. you now have a line like
god:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
instead of
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
you can just do
su god
and make your changes. Contrary to what I think someone earlier suggested,
simply doing
su
doesn't work because su assumes you mean root (and NOT just UID 0) if you
give no name.
If you can't get that to work, post the modified line from /etc/passwd to
the list. If you don't use shadow passwords (if what's between the first two
: is not simply x) you may want to delete the password field, if you're
super paranoid.
Regards,
Niall
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