Users and groups applet messed up

[Darryl LeCount]

Hi everyone,

I've tried posting this question/problem in the forums
(http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=462991) as well as in IRC but
in both cases it has fallen on deaf ears with the exception of a couple
of people who shared my problem.

On Sunday I came home from a weekend in Holland to find that a number of
updates were waiting for me. I installed them, and then went to add a
friend as a user so that she could access my machine via ssh. However,
to my surprise, I found that there were no users listed. Nonetheless, I
assumed this was a temporary glitch and proceeded to add the user
anyway. 

After adding the details, the Users and Groups applet just conked out
altogether. Worse still, I found that I had absolutely no admin rights
whatsoever, sound would not work, no sudo nothing.

I went into recovery mode and added myself to the groups again (it had
transpired that the /etc/group file had been changed so that all the
groups are empty) and everything was fine for a while, until I tried the
users and groups applet again. Again, all admin rights were removed and
I had to go through this palaver again.

I have a feeling there is something wrong with my /etc/passwd
or /etc/shadow as on my GDM login screen (I have a custom one which
shows all the available users) my name shows up three times in the list
(of 15 users) and there are actually only two accounts in my name (a
normal playaround one and a work one). If I try to click on one of the
names, the whole list shifts around and the name I clicked on is not the
one I selected.

I can deal with using adduser, addgroup, moduser and so on, and so forth
for a while, but it really bugs me that my system is playing up like
this. I hope someone can help out!

Thanks!
D    
-- 
Darryl LeCount
www.jamyskis.net
darryl at jamyskis.net

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