[KLUG Members] RedHat 7.0/Bastille Linux passwd problem

[Bob Kanaley]

Greetings all you linux gurus,

I have been trying to add four users to a custom server installation of
RedHat 7.0, hardened with Bastille linux. I can create user accounts, but
cannot set the passwords. I really don’t have a clue, but I suspect it is a
PAM auth setting that happened when I ran the Bastille linux hardening
scripts.

>From runlevel 3, as root, I tried using linuxconf to add johndoe as a POP3,
email only, account. When I got to the password dialog, I typed in the
password, twice, but the password operation failed with a password not set
error.

I quit linuxconf and did a less /etc/passwd. The user account had been
created but had !! in the encrypted password field, so it was locked.

I did a passwd –u johndoe and the lock was removed.

I followed this with passwd –f johndoe but got an authentication tokens not
updated message. A quick look at the passwd file showed that the password
field was empty.

I tried adding a second user via /sbin/useradd joedokes, passwd joedokes.
Once again I could create an account, but could not set the password.

Does anyone have any ideas on what is broken or how to fix it?

Bob

Robert V. Kanaley
Manager Information Systems
Agdia, Inc.
rvk@agdia.com
http://www.agdia.com