Weird Errors

Infinity

Hey Guys,

Either I'm getting weird errors that I cannot think of a solution in a million years or I'm plain stupid, most likely the latter. Anyhow, I recently tried to login to my DirectAdmin server and found the "admin" user's password to be incorrect, the obvious thing to do after trying every single password and asking my partner who has access too was to reset the password.

A relatively simple task, you'd think. This is for all those brainboxes out there, When I tried to reset the password, I got the following message:

[[email protected] ~]# passwd admin
Changing password for user admin.
passwd: Authentication token manipulation error

I did a bit of reasearch on Professor Google's site and found out that it could indicate a problem with the shadow and passwd file mirroring. Sure enough there was no entry for admin in /etc/shadow so I proceeded to run the magical "pwconv" only to find that has an error two. One that looks simple to me but I cannot figure out:

pwconv: can't lock passwd file 

It looks to me as if that is a permissions problem but I don't see what kind of permissions problem.

Can anyone enlighten me on a possible solution?
Regards.

Kuro

are you able to login to the admin user via su - admin ?

Infinity

Nope, tried that. I should've menitioned that I've tried that already. I have a feeling that something is corrupted but backing up all clients manually will be a nightmare.

I could, I guess if all else fails contact DirectAdmin support but that's long.

Kuro

sorry, I don't know much about DirectAdmin as I've never used it before, but try seeing if the admin user actually exists? cat /etc/passwd

Infinity

Yeah, it isn't really my speciality too. I only got donated the license recently.

[[email protected] ~]# grep admin /etc/passwd
diradmin:x:100:101::/usr/local/directadmin:/bin/false
admin:x:501:501::/home/admin:/bin/false

Kuro

/bin/false

I think that may explain why you can't login to admin user via su - admin

kiloserve

Infinity said: admin:x:501:501::/home/admin:/bin/false

Change that to /bin/bash or wherever your bash is on your system and then try logging in as admin. And if you can login as admin, do your passwd change.

admin:x:501:501::/home/admin:/bin/bash

Other things to check:

1) Are you out of disk space?  I've seen this happen on systems with 100% disk usage.  df -h
2) Is there an /etc/passwd.lock or /etc/shadow.lock file?
3) Do you have any other running processes by the admin user?

Infinity

Yep, I know /bin/bash is the normal option however I presumed it was a DirectAdmin thing.

1) Indeed, you are a psycho, I am at 100% disk usage and I need to login to backup one thing then I was going to do a full reinstall.

2) Not when I last checked but I cannot login to SSH to confirm.

3) Not when I last checked.

At first I thought that the server has been hacked or compromized however I cannot login to root or change the password on SolusVM, I cannot login via the SolusVM console which indicates to me something on TailoredVPS's side.

kiloserve

Infinity said: I am at 100% disk usage

If you're at 100% disk usage, you won't be able to change your password as the system needs space to write the lock file. Free up some space and then you can change all the passwords you want and even login

If you are completely unable to login to erase files, ask your VPS provider to manually delete some files for you that you can specify.

No need to reformat just for this unless you just want a clean install again.

yomero

I guess you can login via vzctl.

Also, I miss that feature in HyperVM to manage the files

Infinity

@kiloserve I just formatted it since I couldn't login to root, nor console and I didn't have time to deal with the provider. It also seems like their CentOS templates are a bit messed up.

@yomero Yeah, thats where it would come in useful. HyperVM

Infinity

Okay, this is pretty wierd. The exact same thing happened to my cPanel server except it's no where near the disk limit. I just cannot login to SSH or change the root password or login to the console. Any ideas, they are on different providers.

Damn, this is wierd. Must be something like fail2ban blocking me. I can connect via my hostigation vps.

thekreek

By any luck are you using OpenVZ once I had that problem and it was due to a bad template file.

Infinity

Yep, OpenVZ and yes all the CentOS templates are broken.

cybex

Before proceeding any other changes check whether there is any attribute set for /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow

lsattr /etc/passwd
lsattr /etc/shadow

fly

why are you necro'ing these threads?

HalfEatenPie

October 2011. Really?

gsrdgrdghd

@HalfEatenPie said: Really

Now that he has 5 posts, incoming sales thread from cybexhosting.net in 3, 2, 1, GO!

fly

could have just "trolled" in daniel's tinfoilhat thread and gotten that post count

DanielM

@fly said: could have just "trolled" in daniel's tinfoilhat thread and gotten that post count

Dude wtf?

Oops said Thanks by accident should have clicked flag

gsrdgrdghd

@gsrdgrdghd said: Now that he has 5 posts, incoming sales thread from cybexhosting.net in 3, 2, 1, GO!

And boom! http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/4311/cybexhosting.com-linuxvps-starts-with-3month-solusvm-dedicated-support

I was 3 minutes off

Infinity

Dafuq, this is a bit random..