2007/7/3, John Nemeth <jnemeth@victoria.tc.ca>:
> On Nov 23,  4:41pm, "Zafer Aydogan" wrote:
> }
> } I've come across that trying to set a password for a non existing user
> } displays this error:
> }
> } # passwd foobar
> } Changing password for foobar.
> } Unable to change auth token: failed to recover old authentication token
> }
> } instead of displaying that the user doesn't exists.
> }
> } I'm running current as of July 3rd (4.99.22), but I noticed this bug a
> } while ago.
>
>      This is not a bug.  It is not possible for passwd to determine
> apriori if "user" exists.  Consider the idea of having passwords for
> services which don't correspond to users that can login.  Under the new
> world order of things like PAM and NSS, authentication has been
> decoupled from user info and can come from completely seperate
> sources.
>
> }-- End of excerpt from "Zafer Aydogan"
>

I would prefer a human readable error. In this case I don't really
know, if it is a system error or not. Something like: no such user,
would be great.

Zafer.