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? -- *** 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