Hello new fedora user here, long time Linux(debian/ubuntu & centos) user though. I experienced a problem with one of our server with Fedora 9(I know its old but the developer insisted this version).
3 days ago the dev team was suddenly disconnected when they were uploading files. I was called to assess the problem. ssh was returning "connection refused" even thoug there was no firewall on that server according to the devs. When I was not able to login too I rebooted the server in hope that I only forgotten my own password. On reboot I dropped to single user mode and noticed that the "/" partition was full so I cleared unwanted files and another thing is I noticed that both the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow file was blank. Good thing there was a copy on /etc called "passwd--" and "shadow--", I cp'ed those files and rebooted and Voila everything was fixed.
Now my question is what was the cause why those files had gone blank? I never experience this kind of problem before in ubuntu and centos so I was thinking it was a distro-specific problem. I already search google but the same question had gone unanswered by the community.
regards
On 04/06/2011 11:54 PM, Rod James Bio wrote:
Now my question is what was the cause why those files had gone blank? I never experience this kind of problem before in ubuntu and centos so I was thinking it was a distro-specific problem. I already search google but the same question had gone unanswered by the community.
I'm only guessing, you understand, but it's quite possible that the two problems are related. Some program tried to modify the password file (and shadow, of course) and as a first step, renamed them to make backups. Then, it opened /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, creating new versions but was unable to write to either file because the / partition was full. (Remember, /etc must be on the / partition because it has to be available before the other partitions are mounted because that's where fstab lives.)
On Thursday, 07 April, 2011 03:09 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 04/06/2011 11:54 PM, Rod James Bio wrote:
Now my question is what was the cause why those files had gone blank? I never experience this kind of problem before in ubuntu and centos so I was thinking it was a distro-specific problem. I already search google but the same question had gone unanswered by the community.
I'm only guessing, you understand, but it's quite possible that the two problems are related. Some program tried to modify the password file (and shadow, of course) and as a first step, renamed them to make backups. Then, it opened /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, creating new versions but was unable to write to either file because the / partition was full. (Remember, /etc must be on the / partition because it has to be available before the other partitions are mounted because that's where fstab lives.)
Thanks. That could be it. I'll look for that process. Thanks again
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Joe Zeff -
Rod James Bio