Hi Keith, Actually, I did run pwconv to no avail. I also tried YaST first, and that failed, too. Here some more info that I recently discovered. After running useradd, I tried to telnet into my machine and log into the new account. Here's what I saw in /var/log/messages: tux:~ # useradd -m deb -p xyz123 (telnet to tux from andypc, attempt login to deb account) Sep 5 23:42:05 tux login: FAILED LOGIN 1 FROM andypc.linux.bogus FOR deb, User not known to the underlying authentication module Now, I would have expected a failed password, since -p puts in the encrypted password and not plaintext, but not "user not known". This makes me think of PAM. Am I on the right track? So why does this work for everybody else? :-) Thanks, Andy -- Andy Stewart Founder, Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://rob.millbury.net/~wlug Keith Wright wrote:

...

I tried adding a new user with useradd(8), namely 'pcguest'. My system is SuSE 6.2 with shadow passwords.

This was so much easier without shadow passwords...hack /etc/passwd and all was well. Oh well, I'll learn something new today.

You can still do that, but after you edit /etc/passwd you must run 'pwconv' to update the shadow database. (See 'man pwconv'. But you knew that.) Maybe your 'useradd' is an old version that changes /etc/passwd without fixing the shadows.

-- -- Keith Wright <kwright@free-comp-shop.com>

Programmer in Chief, Free Computer Shop <http://www.free-comp-shop.com> --- Food, Shelter, Source code. ---

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