Hi List,
We have a CentOS VPS running a web site in a DC far away. The chap that dev's this site told me he couldn't SFTP in yesterday, his password was being rejected (I went to his desk to confirm and saw it was telling him the password was incorrect but neither him nor me had changed it and we are the only two with access to this VPS). So I logged in as root and reset his password, be he still couldn't log in (same problem, claiming the password was wrong).
[root@server ~]# passwd webdevuser Changing password for user webdevuser. New UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: passwd: all authentication tokens updates successfully.
I tried to SSH in as the web dev user and it wouldn't let me in. Returning back to my root console window;
[root@server ~]# su - webdevuser [webdevuser@server ~]# passwd Changing password for user webdevuser. Changing password for webdevuser. (current) UNIX password: passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
Firstly; I am stracthing my head as to why his password was no longer working in the first place?
Secondly; Why I can't reset it?
Googling around many people suggest there is a discrepancy between the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files and by deleting /etc/shadow and using pwconv to recreate shadow and the same for /etc/groups, deleting gshadow recreating it with grpconv will solve the problem but I still can't login as the web dev user.
Any ideas anyone?