Unable to change password

[Rick Harris]

On Monday 11 December 2006 22:45, Andrew Hill wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Well, I'm stumped. I've got a machine that I can't seem to change the
> root password on:
>
> [root at staff ~]# passwd
> Changing password for user root.
> New UNIX password:
> Retype new UNIX password:
> passwd: Authentication failure
>
> The permissions on /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow seem to be the same as on
> other servers, and even "setenforce permissive" makes no difference.
>
> Any ideas where I should start to look?


Maybe not the most ideal solution, but you could boot off a LiveCD, mount 
partitions, chroot and then issue `passwd`.


RIck