From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Dec 15 15:28:40 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8B68416A55E for ; Mon, 15 Dec 2003 15:28:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3FA7643D1D for ; Mon, 15 Dec 2003 15:28:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) id hBFNSccg068877; Mon, 15 Dec 2003 17:28:38 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dan) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 17:28:38 -0600 From: Dan Nelson To: Rishi Chopra Message-ID: <20031215232837.GJ17799@dan.emsphone.com> References: <3FDE4273.2080404@cal.berkeley.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <3FDE4273.2080404@cal.berkeley.edu> X-OS: FreeBSD 5.2-BETA X-message-flag: Outlook Error User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1i cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ID says no such user, PW says already exists ?!?! X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 23:28:40 -0000 In the last episode (Dec 15), Rishi Chopra said: > This is gonna sound crazy, but: I got my FreeBSD box up and running > and decided to add a user account for myself (avoid the perils of > working as root?) I added a named account 'rchopra' and everything > was honky-dorey. > > The following series of events occured and have left me confused and > unable to use or re-add the 'rchopra' account: > > 1) I manually added myself to the 'wheel' account, in order to allow > 'su' to root. Rather than using 'pw', I was under the impression > just editing the entry in '/etc/group' would work; my entry looked > like this: > > wheel:*:0:root:rchopra The userlist is comma-delimited: wheel:*:0:root,rchopra > 2) This action seemed to cause a problem; I attempted to login and su, > and I was not able to login successfully (my password would not work). > I attempted to run 'id rchopra' at the command prompt, which returns an > error: > > # id rchopra > 'id: rchopra: no such user' > > Strangely enough, the '/home/rchopra' directory still exists. > > 3) OK, no problem right? Just run 'adduser' and create the account > again... Unfortunately, after entering all the information for the user > account 'rchopra' the system says: > > pw: user 'rchopra' already exists > adduser: ERROR: There was an error adding user (rchopra) That's a little weird. Is there an 'rchopra' user when you run vipw? Messing with /etc/group shouldn't have affected your ability to log in. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com