[Bug 432964] Re: System crash in guest session locks /etc/passwd forever

[leonbravo]

Long time no see answers to this problem. I have it in a newer
distribution:

Linux  xxx 3.0.0-14-generic #23-Ubuntu SMP Mon Nov 21 20:28:43 UTC 2011
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I was changing the main group of my login with "usermod -g newgroup
user".  Later, I did erase the old group.  The operation apparently
finished well. But after restarting, my login does have only the
newgroup, I lost my root privileges so modifications from the session
have been impossible.

I tried starting from recovery mode, and couldn't add group to my login
because couldn't lock file /etc/passwd. Checking I found this bug, and
could check in my system the existence of

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   1929 2012-01-07 20:28 /etc/passwd
-rw------- 1 root root   1928 2012-01-07 20:20 /etc/passwd-
-rw-r----- 1 root shadow 1279 2012-01-07 17:48 /etc/shadow
-rw------- 1 root root   1250 2012-01-05 23:27 /etc/shadow-

I tried erasing such *- files  aka passwd-  and shadow-, from recovery
session as root, only got message telling me the files are read only.

Any workarounds ?  cheers.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/432964

Title:
  System crash in guest session locks /etc/passwd forever

Status in “adduser” package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in “shadow” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools

  Trying to change real name, Name changes. re-launching users-admin,
  the real name is not applied. will revert to one set in original
  installation.

  ProblemType: Bug
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Sat Sep 19 12:02:19 2009
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
  Package: gnome-system-tools 2.27.3-0ubuntu1
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-10.34-generic
  SourcePackage: gnome-system-tools
  Uname: Linux 2.6.31-10-generic x86_64

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