Personally I would have tried and fixed the "corrupted" userID before I
would have deleted the user. That should always be the very last option
when all else fails. But at this point it's a bit late for that huh? :0)
Never go through an just vi /etc/passwd, or whatever editor you use.
Learn basic movements in vi and use the command vipw. It's a command
that all *nix systems. It will edit the /etc/passwd and then make sure
it's propigated to /etc/passwd.master, or whatever the system decides to
call that database.
>From there delete the line that contains the userID. Then use vigr and
remove the line with the userID there as well. It will do the same thing
about updating /etc/group.
>From there change the permissions to the /home directories. I'm assuming
you'd like to keep those. Change them to root. chown root:root -R
/home/$USER.
Then create the user using adduser. The syntax would look like adduser
userID. Set the passwd, and then change the permissions to the home
directory. chown userID:userID -r /home/$USER. From there make sure
everything in the directory is owned by the "NEW" userID.
Now su - userID. Make sure you can move through, run a few commands and
make sure you don't have .*rc files that don't have access to things like
/tmp or something like that.
Make sure you correct all those issues and then login. It's a bit of
work around, but at this point it appears to be the only way you can
really accomplish what you want here.
Hopefully that leads you in a better direction.
tdh
--
T. Holmes
-----------------
UNIXTECHS.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------
"Real Men Use Vi!"
Uptime:
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9:07am up 4 days, 9:34, 8 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
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| Hi,
| I am trying to delete a user account (mine) which got corrupted.
| userconf gave an error, so I deleted manually every thing I could find
| relating to this account (in retrospect, probably a mistake)
| Now when I go to recreate the account (adduser cj) I get vipn
| lockfile (etc/ptmp) is present.
| I mchecked that file, but it doesn't appear to have any reference to
| the account.
| Any suggestions on how I can fix this ?
|
| ================================================================
| Colin Jenkins
| ICQ: 650611 Voice: +61 97351410 Mob: 0409196144
| "You can't get the wood, you know." --Minni Bannister
| ================================================================
|
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