I'm screwed - can't login

David G. Miller (aka DaveAtFraud) dave at davenjudy.org
Fri Aug 5 03:41:18 UTC 2005


ndbecker2 at gmail.com wrote:

>My server has been running FC4 with all updates.  After my son just
>accidentally unplugged it, it rebooted so that noone can login.  If booted
>in text (mode 3), then after the login and password it just returns to
>login prompt.
>
>It can't be booted in single user mode.  When this is tried, it says "going
>into single user mode", but then starts all the same services as mode 3
>(AFAICT) and acts just the same.
>
>I booted into rescue mode, did chroot /mnt/sysimage, and looked
>at /var/log/messages and /var/log/secure.  Nothing intersting shown.
>
>I can't ssh in.  It just logs in and out immediately.
>
>Perhaps related, I had selected to disable selinux IIRC and it said it would
>relabel on next boot.  Of course, it crashed before that happened.
>
First question is, have you tried any other accounts when attempting to 
ssh in?  This could occur because your login shell has been set to 
something like /bin/false or just something bogus. 

Try booting in rescue mode (again) and take a look at /etc/passwd and 
see what it looks like.  It may have gotten zapped, /bin/bash may have 
gotten zapped, etc.  If /etc/passwd looks good, try changing your login 
shell to something like /bin/tcsh or /bin/ksh and then reboot and try 
logging in again. 

Also, while in rescue mode, you might want to run fsck on which ever 
partition holds /.  If the functionality isn't there in rescue mode, 
download and burn a knoppix live cd, boot from it and see what needs to 
be cleaned up.






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