nixCraft

This morning I tried to login as root in fedora machine it throws:

sh-3.00 # passwd root
passwd:unknown user name 'root'

I checked the /etc/passwd file and it says:

root:500:500:/home/root:/bin/bash

I tried to change 500 to 0 and again tried.
But to my surprise,it threw the same error:
passwd:unknown user name 'root'

and the file /etc/passwd get changed to root:500:500:/home/root:/bin/bash again


Also ,I checked the root directory..its there?
If I run #useradd root
it says: useradd:unknown gid 100
No group "mail" exists,creating mail spool with mode 0600

Can anyone help me whats going on here.???????plzzz
I am stucked !!!!!

I don't use fedora core, but SuSe got the UID and GID as follows
root:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

Why don't you try that I see if it works or not. Let me know when after you try this please. Thanks

I have checked with that and modified but still the problem persists.Generally the entry is same in all the linux machines.

But I dont understand that by going to single mode even I couldnt run the passwd root correctly.I think i need to troubleshoot through rescue disk.That is only left for me to do.
hev yu any idea How can I recover back the login thoruhg that???

HALF WORK DONE !!!

I tried to make little modification but need your all help to break through it.
What i did was I changed the "required" field to "sufficient" in /etc/pam.d/system-auth and /etc/pam.d/login.Now I am able to login as a user created but not root still.I supplied a passwd for the user but to my surprise when I login,it says:
---------------------------
user vjs with id=501 doesnt exist
[I have no name!localhost]$

Any idea whats wrong with that?i checked the user entry in /etc/passwd its there?I have also started nscd in runlevel 1?
Plzz zhelp??

Login into single user mode / rescue mode

Mount file system / /usr etc

Make sure root UID / GID is set to zero (0)

Reset root password

Save the changes

Unmount file system

reboot

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May the force with you!

Hi,

Can you paste the following command's output:

#getent passwd root
#getent shadow root
#getent group root

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thanks,
aaru