Re: cannot log in: 6.0 upgrade broke PAM / pwdb

[Ben Liblit <liblit cs berkeley edu>]

Thomas E. Dodd wrote:
> From the single user mode, try adding a new user. See if that user
> can login.

Excellent idea.  A newly added user with a non-empty password can log
on.  A newly added user with an empty password cannot.  Furthermore,
the "passwd" command cannot give a password to a user with an empty
password.  It reports success, but does not actually change
/etc/passwd.  That tricked me into thinking that non-empty passwords
were broken too, since I didn't realize that "passwd" hadn't worked.

It looks like I am being bitten by the empty-password bug described by
Balaji Ramani <balajir research nj nec com>.  I'll get the patch from
him, or just use real passwords for the time being.

Your suggestions about tty issues were good ideas too, since that's
likely to trip up many people.  In my case, since the X display
managers ([gkx]dm) are also broken, I don't think tty's are at fault.

Thank you for prodding me in the right direction!  There's nothing
like a responsive, intelligent community of support to help remind me
why I love Linux.