Adduser/passwd problems

Snaga · n00b Joined: 09 Jun 2003 Posts: 5

On a newly installed machine (haven't done anything brave or funny with it), after doing "adduser" (or useradd) and changing to that user, I can't use passwd. I get an "passwd: Authentication token manipulation error".

I found that a bit odd, as I followed the published x86 installation routine, but ok.... I usermodded -p SOMEPASSWORD. Seems to work, I get no complaints.... Still can't use passwd as that user.

In /etc/shadow I see the password isn't encrypted. I think that is where the (or a) problem is.

Extremely strange in this is that the root password got encrypted just fine when I set it early in the installation. Hmmm, in fact, running passwd as root works fine. No complaints about the authentication, no unencrypted password in /etc/shadow.
Let's see what happens when I moduser -p SOMETHING root. AHHA! I end up with an unencrypted password.

Okay... So probably something goes wrong when useradd/moduser tries to use some crypt utility/library/something to encrypt password. Passwd itself however works fine with decrypting/encrypting. (I wouldn't even have noticed a problem if both didn't do crypto things)

And here I'm lost on what to do. Any hints?

jimlynch11 · Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2003 3:43 pm Post subject:

check out superadduser, its a great script that will take care of the entire add user process, passwords, homedirectory creation, groups, etc.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20584

Moved from Installing Gentoo.
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Quis separabit? Quo animo?

Snaga · n00b Joined: 09 Jun 2003 Posts: 5

Thank you, the superadduser script solved my problems; passwords are now happily encrypted.