My original problem was as follows:
>Our Alphastation 500/333 running DU4.0A was shut down for over a month
>(don't ask), and during that time the root password expired. When I
>brought it back up it complained that the root password expired and
>that the security database is corrupt. It lets me use the old root
>password to log on to the console, but X won't start.
>
>It will not let me change the password from the console using passwd.
>I have been mucking around with edauth, but have not found the right
>incantations to free things up. I will start digging through the
>enhanced security docs, but I would appreciate your help.
Thanks to the many people who replied. This summary is very late
because I was not able to verify that everything was working until the
last day or so. The main problem did turn out to be that the root
password lifetime had been exceeded. The first solution offered that
worked was to use edauth to change the time for the last successful
password change. This allowed me to update the root password. The
system would not let me log on using CDE or X until I fixed that, so I
had to log on to the console and edit using line mode.
The problem with starting X was a separate issue related to the fact
that the system could not see the router or name server at that time.
The first reply with the solution that I used was from:
Toni Harbaugh-Blackford
Other suggestions to delete and recreate the database (which might
have worked were from:
wmills_at_WellsFargo.COM
Yoav Flam
Thanks to all
Dave Korzekwa
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Received on Tue Jun 22 1999 - 17:11:06 NZST