*BSD News Article 61125


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!netnews.upenn.edu!dsinc!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!news1.is.net!news
From: jason@webmaster.net (Jason R. Mastaler)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: CHPASS and VIPW not working [BSD/OS 2.0]
Date: 02 Feb 1996 14:36:39 -0500
Organization: Atlanta Webmasters
Lines: 33
Sender: jason@xxx.webmaster.net
Message-ID: <x520odbjug.fsf@xxx.webmaster.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: xxx.webmaster.net
X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.0.13

A while back I posted to this group about a problem I am having with
some of my BSD/OS 2.0.1 systems, 

The "chpass" and "vipw"commands do not work on a few of my systems but work 
fine on others.  When I run the chpass command on some systems, all I get 
back is a "no changes made" message instead of being put into an editor for 
changes.  
 
  bsd:~> chpass jason
  chpass: no changes made
 
Similarily, the vipw command returns an error message instead of launching an 
editor for making changes.

  vipw: editing /etc/pw.025344: Undefined error: 0

On other systems, these commands works perfectly.  Last time I asked about 
this, I received a number of responses indicating that this was a known 
problem under BSD/OS, and there was a patch to fix it.  2 problems with this. 
 First, on machines that have IDENTICAL patches installed, one will work, and 
another wont.  Second, I can't find a patch in the patch index that addresses 
these problems.  Don't confuse this problem with users not being able to 
change their passwords with the "passwd" command.  Patch U200-013 took care 
of this.  So if anyone knows why this might be happening, I would really 
appreciate knowning about it.  I find it convenient to edit the user database 
information with an editor and a safe check.  Thanks much.
 
Jason R. Mastaler

--
jason@webmaster.net