Thank you Ray! That was a close one. I'll reiterate here for others to learn from my stupidity, the original message follows this note. (I sent the note from my outside account which is a dial-up on Macconnect, I keep it just for situations like these ;^). The problem was a compile gone bad, my fault entirely, I was trying to do three things at once and instead of typing in /etc/passwd at the jed prompt to edit the file, I typed /etc/passwd as an input to configure .htaccess for my server. Of course the Makefile overwrote the passwd file and when I logged off, well getting back in proved difficult to say the least. I did not have a rescue disk made............................................. dumb newbie - dumb newbie - dumb newbie Lucky for me Webmin was still up and running and uses a different password file, so I was able to create a new root user account, log back in and restore my passwd file from backup. Lessons learned? 1) Root is dangerous if you're not careful 2) Always have a rescue disk (what was my excuse ?) 3) Working in more consoles/buffers than you can keep track of is a bad idea Tonight I will dig up the rescue disk info and get some made, then I'm going to test it by practicing booting off the floppy and loading some files in an editor. (a smarter, wiser) DAve >Well, it got through; I hope you get this back in time for it to be useful >(how will you get this is pop3 is down, though?). > >Are you currently logged in on any console or serial connection? If so, you >need to check: > >1. If filesystems are properly mounted (df). > >2. If you can look at /etc/passwd with vi or even with more. > >3. You are probably running shadow passwords (Slackware switched to them as >default somewhere around 3.4), so see if you (as root) can read /etc/shadow >. (If you aren't logged in as root, see if su works.) > >If you aren't logged in, your only real bet is to restart the system, >booting from your rescue disk. Then mount the hard disk's root filesystem on >the rescue disk's filesystem's /mnt, and check the files I've listed above >for problems. > >BTW, this could be something as simple as a blank line in /etc/passwd or >/etc/shadow . These files are the most sensitive I've ever seen (well, maybe >sendmail.cf is worse) to small format errors. > >At 09:05 PM 2/10/99 -0800, goodrich wrote: >>I hope this gets through, right now my Slackware box refuses to let me log >>in claiming every username and password are invalid. I have sendmail up, >>the webserver is up, telnet and pop are down. I'm afraid to attempt a >>restart. >> >>What do I do Now? >> >>DAve. >------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--- >Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo "On the Plains of Hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the Dawn of Victory, sat down to wait, and waiting -- died"
