Hugo van der Merwe wrote: > > Hi, > > A friend of mine, for whom I installed Debian, recently accidentily turned > off his computer before the shutdown process was complete. When he booted > back up, the whole thing was messed up... (He had to run fsck manually, > and probably said "y" to all questions.) > > It turned out that his /etc/group file was incorrect (out dated, or > something weird, but still recognisable), his /etc/shadow file contained > what should have been the current /etc/group, his /etc/passwd contained > what should have been /etc/shadow! Needless to say, he couln't log in. > (There was some error message that looked something like "::: No such file > or directory" - not that I'm 100% sure of the formatting, this was all > told over the telephone...). After moving the files around (in single user > mode), and copying /etc/passwd- to /etc/passwd, he could log in again, but > instead of the login prompt: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ > > he had: > > I have no [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ > > (Or so he explained over the telephone...) I suggested deleting the user > and recreating it, out of laziness. (Oops, I just realize that that > probably took him out of the groups as well, but he'll figure that out > quickly and fix it.) > > What I was wondering, firstly, is how these files could have been moved > around... he logged out all the users, and it didn't sound like he was > running anything strange just before it. > > The second thing is, why the "I have no name"? Anyone have any idea where > that info is supposed to be? I'd think it simply uses the login name... > > Anyway, just sharing an "incomplete shutdown experience"... > Hugo van der Merwe ------------------------------------------------------------ Just a guess but did he have the filesystem mounted when he ran fsck :-)
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