can't login as anyone - not even as root!

[Dave Banning]

--- Jerry McAllister <jerrymc at clunix.cl.msu.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > Thanks, Sunil for the steps, but I have tried that already.
> > 
> > When I get to the # prompt in single user mode, I cannot use 
> > the passwd command. I get the error;;
> > 
> > passwd: error opening database: /etc/pwd.db: Permission denied
> > passwd: /etc/master.passwd: unchanged
> > 
> 
> Sort of sounds like you didn't remount root.  
> When you come up in single user, root is mounted without write permission.
> You need to remount it.    mount -u /   will do it although
> supposedly doing a mount -a will effectively include that step as well.
> Still, we always do the extra step, maybe for old times.

While I believe the problem was in the permissions, -somewhere-
I don't think it was as you are suggesting, becuase I -did- have
enough permission to completely remove /etc and replace it with
a backup /etc directory I had.

I the end, I did a minimal install which over-wrote the basic
boot files, and that did it.

thanks for your comments -




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