[F23] cannot unlock a user with passwd - invalid shadow.lock

[Rick Stevens]

On 12/03/2015 10:37 AM, Frédéric Bron wrote:
> On fedora 23 the following command does not work anymore:
> $ passwd -u username
> Unlocking password for user username.
> passwd: Libuser error at line: 171 - Invalid contents of lock
> `/etc/shadow.lock'.
> passwd: Error (password not set?)
>
>
> What can I do to unlock this user?

Well, for one thing you'd need to do it as root--not as yourself (the
shadow files have permissions 000 (only root can access them).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital    ricks at alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2        ICQ: 226437340           Yahoo: origrps2 -
-                                                                    -
-       "I'd explain it to you, but your brain might explode."       -
----------------------------------------------------------------------