I wish I never had this ... please help me fight it!

[jludwig]

On Tuesday 09 May 2006 9:12 am, Marian POPESCU wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I am struggling here with the most weird thing to date (for me).
> These are the facts:
> I cannot log into my FC5 box.
> While booting I get lots of error messages: "unknown user: root";
> starting rescue mode from CD and chrooting the old system behaves
> strangely: - I start mc and I try to modiy *any* text file - when i press a
> key it will crash instantly.
>  - whoamy responds "cannot find name for user ID 0"
>  - passwd responds "Can not identify you!"
>
> My checks:
>  - I verified the file system - seems OK;
>  - I compared shadow with shadow- = 7 bytes difference
>  - I compared groups with groups- = OK
>  - I compared passwd with passwd- = OK
>
>
> All this started after rebooting the system ; I was just finished the
> update process - installed kernel kernel-2.6.16-1.2111_FC5, installed the
> latest updates as of 2006-05-09 10:45 AM.
>
> Can someone explain to me what could be wrong with this system?
>
> I would prefer to repair the system instead of completely reinstall it
> (lots of settings to remember).
>
> Thank you in advance!
>
> marian
When you use your rescue disk, cat your passwd file and see if the user root  
exists.
If not you may need to enter the user root manually. 
The system will not boot without a root user (and probably password) since 
most programs and files (all system files??) are owned by root.
-- 
Some people have convictions.
Some people have opinions
I think I'll have a cheeseburger!