Hello all,

It been days since I have posted stuffs, I am posting a new issue which I have come across from a client’s system. He come to me saying he is unable to login to Linux machine using root account, and asked me  to reset the password. I have logged into console and booted the machine in single usermode and reset the password. However, after booting in normal mode when I enter the password it logs in and disconnects immediately and prompts me to enter username and password again. Sounds fishy right ? I have spend around 2 hours figuring out what has gone wrong. I have checked pam configuration, passwd file entry and everything using cat command. I saw everything was perfect., then later I added a new user and checked and I was able to login to the new account and not any of the old accounts including root account, then I opened the /etc/passwd file using vi command, guess what I have got ? See below.

Wow, its in Windows format. Looks like my client or his IT person has downloaded and uploaded the file from windows machine. We can either manual remove the ^M entries at the end of all lines or use the below command provided you have installed dos2unix package in your system.

#dos2unix /etc/passwd

This will fix the issue and you will now be able to login to the machine without issues.

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