On Tue, 18 Mar 1997 Robert_Atkinson@ascend.com wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have run into two problems which I believe might be inter-related and
> hope
> someone might shed some light on as to what might be going wrong or what I
> am doing
> wrong.
> 
> 1) I cannot change the passwd for root. Each time I do and try to login I
> get an "incorrect login"
> error (double and triple checking the password entered each time). From
> which point I have
> to replace the file in /etc. I can also not create a user, each time (using
> vipw) I get a similar
> error. I was able to add a user once using "cpin" and "cpout" but then I
> get an error that the user
> does not exist even though I do a "more" on the passwd file and can see the
> entry with all the
> required info (login, UID, etc.).

NetBSD uses a passwd database/shadow password file.  The contents of
/etc/passwd are not really used for logins.  In reality a binary database
is built from /etc/passwd, and that is used instead.  If you use vipw
it will automagically create a lock file so no other modifications can
occur to the password file, invoke vi on the passwd file, and run the
program that generates the binary password database from the edited
plaintext /etc/passwd file.

MORAL: su to root and use passwd, or su to root and use vipw, you might
also be able to delete the binary file, (its in /etc sonewhere, probably
passwd.db or some such, I aint on a NetBSD machine right now) and
see if the system will regenerate it from the plaintext /etc/passwd after
a reboot.
 
I have no clue about #2, I don't really even understand what is going
wrong, want to try to describe it in more detail?

---------
Christopher R. Bowman
crb@Glue.umd.edu
My home page