Howdy,

A "security analyst" made some unknown changes with 'chattr' to a server I'm 
administrating (yeah, I know. I'm waiting on a detailed list of changes he 
made.) and now I can't add or del users from /etc/passwd. When I try, I get 
"unable to lock password file". Also, when I try to change a user's password, I 
get the error "passwd: Authentication token lock busy".

I've removed the immutable bit from /etc/passwd* and /etc/shadow* with 'chattr 
-i ...' and it still didn't work. I even recursively removed the immutable bit 
for /etc/* and _still_ can't add or delete users.

Anybody ever see anything like this? Where does the password lock file get 
created? I think PAM is failing, but I'm not sure why.

Thanks,
John Hebert





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