On Tue, Jan 03, 2012 at 10:30:38AM -0500, James B. Byrne wrote: > I encountered a couple of strange events with respect to > password authentication this morning. Two of our staff > were unable to login onto several systems using their > usual passwords. Both users had last logged in on these > hosts using their accounts and passwords on Friday past. > > The two accounts could not log on to any of the servers > for which they had access and the message log on each > showed that access was denied for a failed password. The > systems involved were running either CentOS-4.9 or > CentOS-5.7. So, the effect was uniform across multiple > hardware and software platforms. I also checked these > accounts against our warm backup machine and encountered > the same problems for both. > > I verified that the passwords being used were correct for > the accounts. I also verified that neither of passwords > had been reset in some months and there were no expiry > dates set for the accounts. > > I would accept the coincidence of both forgetting their > passwords except for the fact that each had kept a record > of their password in their wallets and I was able to > confirm those values against our records as well. > > Resetting both the passwords to their current values using > the passwd utility on each system corrected the problem > insofar as the users were concerned. However, I am > somewhat perplexed as to the reason for their passwords to > stop working in the first place. Is anyone here aware of > any reason why this might happen? Any chance it is something as basic as the caps lock key getting hit unbeknownst to the users? It has happened to me a number of times - especially on my current keyboard which does not have an indicator light. ////jerry > > -- > *** E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel *** > James B. Byrne mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca > Harte & Lyne Limited http://www.harte-lyne.ca > 9 Brockley Drive vox: +1 905 561 1241 > Hamilton, Ontario fax: +1 905 561 0757 > Canada L8E 3C3 > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos