Can't change user password

[Frank Leonhardt]

On 07/04/2014 16:52, Juan Bernhard wrote:
> El 07/04/2014 10:56 a.m., Polytropon escribió:
>>> Hello list, I have a really strange problem. I can't chage a user
>>>> password, I tryed from the user itself, from root, in sigle user mode...
>>>> I also try to change the hsash in /etc/master.passwd. The passwd command
>>>> exit successfully, but nothing happens, the old password is not changed.
>>>> The only solution I found is to delete the user and create him again...
>> You should be able to force a password change with "passwd <user>"
>> as root, and run "pwd_mkdb /etc/master.passwd" to generate the
>> binary files. Those need to be "in sync" with the plaintext
>> files. See "man pwd_mkdb" and "man passwd" for details.
> Thanks a lot Polytropon! That worked for me... I was getting paranoid on
> this thing.
>
It's probably worth remembering the "vipw" utility, which is the safest 
way to edit passwd file directly, like we used to in the old days when 
it was a single plain text file. It sets and removes the appropriate 
locks and rebuilds the hidden version after doing some sanity checks on 
your edits.

Regards, Frank.