Unable to login as a User or Root on one client

I am running 5.10 Generic_120011-14
Sunblade 1500

I have one client that was working fine in a training environment. Then this week the user is unable to login as the user that is created by default. The students do not have access to root to change system files or user accounts. This is strictly controlled.

The system boots up fine without errors to the login screen. but unable to login. I tried telnet as the user and this did not work same for FTP. the password is simple and I know caps lock is not on.

I had a local engineer try root login and the same result. he tried on a working computer same password and account and it worked. So i had him try to boot -s when did this the following error had came up.

*** Unable to retrieve `root' entry in shadow password file ***

Entering System Maintenance Mode

I can't RCP the shadow into /etc either. any suggestions beside reloading I was going to boot off cd and check the shadow and password file to see what happened.

Rebooting the system from CD seems to be the good option. Once system is booted then mount the hardisk to /a and modify the /etc/shadow by just removing the password column.

Yeah that is what I did. The shadow file was 0 in size not sure why this happened but I copied it over from the CD them blanked out the root password then did a rcp of another clients shadow file. Thanks

This is probably due to corruption. You're using PAM?

Maybe pwconv command from root shoul help?..

Hi deaconf1
I aslo faced same problem in SF V890.

I think your server some chegnegs(like scripts) or customized OS intallations had happend.
It is changed the main configuration file /etc/pam.conf file.
It is not perfectly v vll face this type of issues.
You will not found /etc/passwd or only root password.

troubleshoot for this issue.

you can go singale user mode or multi user mode.
U can give fsck -y/m command.
deffinely it will work.
Try it...

fsck -y/m --->"/m" for?

fsck -y or
fsck -m

Well we do a custom installation with jumpstart, Then we use managesoft to push packages to the systems. 99% of the time there is no problem and the system will operate correctly there after. Up until recently some select clients and a server will have the shadow file removed contents removed leaving a 0kb file.
This renders the system unusable. they can't login with any account since there is no shadow file.

Now besides going to the site which is 13 hours away and doing a boot -s with a Solaris 10 DVD is there another way remotely that I can try to recover this shadow file?

How do I check if I am using pam. I have a pam.conf file in /etc if that means anything

The pwconv command I could not use since the shadow file is missing entirely and the single user mode is not working. Unless I am looking at this command the wrong way

the pwconv command works.

For the test i vi the /etc/shadow file
then i made sure it was 0kb then did a reboot
then stop+a
boot -s
then it dropped me into #
then i did pwconv
then did a passwd my 2 user accounts
rebooted
then i could login. Thanks for the help