Cannot Login After Using Kuser to setup Accounts

[Gerard Seibert]

On Wednesday, May 19, 2004 3:00:52 PM Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk wrote:

|>Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 16:22:19 +0100
|>From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk>
|>Subject: Re: Cannot Login After Using Kuser to setup Accounts
|>To: Mark Teel <mark at teel.ws>
|>Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
|>Message-ID:
|>	<20040519152218.GB83685 at happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk>
|>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
|>
|>On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 09:23:24AM -0500, Mark Teel wrote:
|>> On a fresh install of FreeBSD 5.2, after I add a user via kuser, when I 
|>> logout I cannot log back in!
|>> I get a message stating that the "accound" has expired, even for the 
|>> root user.
|>> 
|>> Please help as this has rendered my system unusable.
|>
|>Hmmm... This sounds like a bug in KDE that was fixed some months ago.
|>It would scramble the contents of the /etc/master.passwd file.
|>
|>To get the system back into a working state, reboot into single user
|>mode (ie. wait until the 10 second countdown before booting the
|>kernel, hit a key to interrupt and then type 'boot -s' and then just
|>hit return when prompted to choose a shell.
|>
|>Now you should be able to restore the master.passwd file from the
|>backup copy automatically kept in /var/backups.  Try the following
|>series of commands:
|>
|>    # fsck -p
|>    # swapon -a
|>    # mount -a
|>    # cd /etc
|>    # mv master.passwd master.passwd-`date +%Y%m%d`
|>    # cp /var/backups/master.passwd.bak master.passwd
|>    # pwd_mkdb 
|>    # reboot
|>
|>That should restore the password file to the state it was before you
|>tried the changes that caused all of the trouble, and you should now
|>be able to log in.  If you haven't got a good copy of a password file
|>in /var/backups, you can use the default installation password file
|>from /usr/src/etc/master.passwd instead, but remember to set a root
|>password immediately after you copy it into /etc.
|>
|>Once you're back up and running properly, update your ports tree using
|>cvsup(1) and install the latest versions of the KDE software -- using
|>portupgrade(1) [from the sysutils/portupgrade port] is probably the
|>most pleasant way to do that, but be sure and check in
|>/usr/ports/UPDATING to see if there are any special measures you need
|>to take.  Or you can grab precompiled packages from the FreeBSD FTP
|>servers.
|>
|>	Cheers,
|>
|>	Matthew
|>
|>-- 
|>Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
|>                                                      Savill Way


********** Reply Separator **********
Wednesday, May 19, 2004 6:19:56 PM

I had the exact same problem recently. I reported it as a bug to KDE.
That bug report is still open as far as I can tell. It appears to be a
randomly occurring phenomena.

Gerard Seibert
gerard-seibert at rcn.com