Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 14:31:07 -0600 From: Eric Long <eric@metrotv.com> To: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Help. /etc/pwd.db.: Permission denied Message-ID: <B683742B.7AF%eric@metrotv.com>
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For some unknown reason, my passwd file got corrupted today. I found out by not being able to su to root. I can, however, ssh into the box with root, so I have root access to make any appropriate changes. I think I have gone through every FreeBSD related conversation on the web that deals with pwd.db, master.passwd, passwd, and spwd.db and still cannot figure out how to fix this. I ran pwd_mkdb -C /etc/passwd and came up with a corrupted line. It happened to be the line in the passwd file that root is defined on. I have restored these files numerous times (pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd and from master.passwd backups) and have been able to correct this corruption. pwd_mkdb -C /etc/passwd no longer produces errors, but I still cannot su to root, nor can I change passwords on any account. su'ing to root results in a "Sorry" message even though I am entering the correct password. Here's what happens when I try to change a password: # passwd passwd: error opening database: /etc/pwd.db.: Permission denied passwd: /etc/master.passwd: unchanged # I have a few other FreeBSD boxes running and have verified that permissions are correct. To do further tests, I changed all passwd, master.passwd, pwd.db, and spwd.db to world read/write to see if I could get around the Permission denied message. It worked...sort of. I could go through the password changing prompts, but after entering the verification of the new password, I got another permission denied message for /etc/pw.bleh where "bleh" was what seemed to be a few random characters each time I tried doing this. Furthermore, normally when su'ing alread as root, nothing happens. After the passwd file problems (but even now that it's fixed) I get this: # su su: setgroups: Operation not permitted su: Jan 11 15:23:33 boxname su: initgroups(root,0): Operation not permitted setusercontext: Operation not permitted # My permissions are correct, I have verified this by comparing them to other working FreeBSD boxes I run. My passwd file isn't corrupted anymore, my master.passwd file is also fine. Does anyone know what is wrong? Thanks in advance, -Eric To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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