Re: I installed RH 7.2 and now I can't login as myself or root

[Tom Diehl <tdiehl rogueind com>]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 11:57:20AM -0500, Pete Peterson wrote:
> 
> I installed RH 7.2, as I've done many times before.  It was a fresh install
> on new partitions.  Everything seemed normal, except for a LONG delay at
> the "postinstall" screen (mentioned this in previous message a few 
> minutes ago).
> 
> During the install, I decided to enable NIS, which I haven't done before at
> this site.  I selected NIS, shadow passwords, no md5 passwords.  I
> specified our Solaris NIS server as the NIS server and specified the NIS
> domain.  I set the root password and created an account on the RH machine
> that didn't conflict with any NIS account name.
> 
> When I rebooted, I couldn't login as myself or as root.  I then did
> a single-user login from grub, did a pwunconv and just out of superstition,
> I redid the passwds for myself and root.  Reboot -- still broken.
> 
> 
> I checked what NIS things were set to run and only found ypbind -- three
> others were not enabled.  I turned off ypbind wich chkconfig, hoping
> that with no NIS, the local passwd file would work OK.  Checked that
> there was a passwd file and no shadow file.  Reboot --- still broken.

Just a suggestion, Try bringing the machine up in single user mode.
Once there try changing the root passwd to something other than what it 
is now. While you are in the machine edit /etc/syslog.conf so that the 
messages, secure, and boot.log will cat to a console like /dev/tty8.
Reboot and try that. If that fails you should be able to look at the 
logs real time and get a better idea what it is failing on. I have 
never used NIS but I just went through setting up winbind with samba.
authconfig supplied with 7.2 did not set up pam properly. I could not
login any way other than ssh. Weird. Since I was running a rawhide
version of samba with winbind I decided to upgrade authconfig and that
fixed the auth problems I was having with winbind. I realize you 
are working with a stock 7.2 system but who is to say you are not 
tickeling some unknown bug. OTOH while you are in single user mode
you might want to bring up authconfig and turn off NIS.

HTH,

-- 
......Tom		BITTERNESS: Never be Afraid to Share Your Dreams 
tdiehl rogueind com	with the World, Because There's Nothing the World 
			Loves More Than the Taste of Really Sweet Dreams.