<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> On 20/12/10 15:08, Simon Greenwood wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:AANLkTinc=Djdm50TmygxMd_CtbdueBDGQKavCGPbPqts@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"><br> <div class="gmail_quote"> <div><font color="#888888">The issue with Windows is that there is a database at the core of the authentication mechanism, and this database can get damaged. Unix and Linux are essentially based on flat files which can be edited with the correct permissions. It is possible to damage /etc/passwd and/or /etc/shadow in such a way as to cause authentication failure, and also to corrupt your user space in such a way as to damage user configuration files, but it's also a lot easier to recover them.<br> <br> s/</font></div> <br> </div> </blockquote> <br> Ah. That makes things a bit clearer. Are there any "Howtos" as to how a (relative) newbie can recover from these sorts of damage?<br> </body> </html>