[Novalug] Recover a dummy user?

Beartooth karhunhammas@Lserv.com
Sun Jul 20 17:11:32 EDT 2008


On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Kevin Cole wrote:
 	[...]
> Although, if I recall, there may be a few "edge cases", the 
> easier(?) thing to do is login as root and edit /etc/passwd, 
> /etc/shadow and /etc/group. Change "user" to "btth" in each.
>
> Then rename /home/user to /home/btth, and finally either 
> "passwd btth" as root, or login as btth using the trivial 
> password and do a "passwd" and "upgrade" your password.
 	[...]
> But you may want to wait for a second opinion on the advice above.
> (It's worked okay for me in the past, but perhaps I was playing with
> fire.)

 	Having had that, particularly from MM, I tried it all 
with nano. At one point, it gave me an error message about 
/etc/gshadow; so I changed that, too.

 	I kept using ^W to find "user", and ignoring all such 
things as rpcuser, jackuser, users, and so on.

 	It didn't want to let me log in as btth. So I logged in 
as root, used the GUI to get to my users, and changed btth's 
password there. (I noticed it did have btth as 500).

 	Then it let me login as btth -- but gave me only a blank 
white screen. I hit Ctrl-alt-backspace, and logged in again; it 
still did it.

 	I'll log back in as root; then what do I fix?

 	I suppose I could delete user btth, log out, log back 
in, and add user btth; or better do a reboot, then try that if 
necessary ...

-- 
Beartooth Implacable, Neo-Redneck Linux Enthusiast
Freedom is my issue : I'm pro-choice, pro-right-to-die,
pro-gun, and pro-term-limits. Without defiance, no liberty.



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