PAM account management error

Support Software & Applications
1

Apparently during a system update today I broke something. I ended up with a lot of "“PAM account management error: Authentication service cannot retrieve authentication info” errors and can no longer sudo because my password is not recognized. Otherwise the system is still working, however, I don’t dare restart for fear of not getting back in (there is a LOT of stuff I badly need on this machine, I can’t risk having to reinstall). Does anybody have any idea what I did wrong and how I ought to go about fixing it? Any help would be sincerely appreciated.

2

if you did something in the terminal
open the terminal and hit the up arrow key - it will bring back past commands in reverse order
or:
list the shell history with
history

That is for the bash shell.

I’m not familiar with zsh - if that is your shell.
It should be similar or even equal.

If you did something in the GUI - you better kinda remember what it was … :wink:

3

Does the error look like the error in this thread?

4

Right now the error looks like “Sorry, try again” when I prefix any command with sudo because the system no longer recognizes my password. :frowning: :frowning:

5

I keep trying to find a solution to my problem, however, mostly what I find supposes that I can still use su so I can fix sudo. In my case, I can’t use su either. Is there any solution other than reinstalling?

6

Check with

$ su -

or directly on another tty if you can still login as root (you wil need roots password).
Check for pacnew files and possibly merge those.

As a general advice: Keep a bootable usb just in case somethings breaks. You can then always boot up the system via usb and manjaro-chroot into your installation to fix any problems.

7

Thx! As I said, I can not log in as root.

I don’t have any pacnew files. I do have a total of 5 pacsave files though?

I do have both a bootable DVD and a dual boot system. I have previously been able to access a broken system from the other one and fix it. How would I go about doing it in this case?

8

Would I be doing something like this?

9

You would use plain chroot (any other linux) or manjaro.-chroot (Manjaro USB) as described here:
https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/GRUB/Restore_the_GRUB_Bootloader
but instead of re-insalling grub, you can then reset the root password

$ passwd

pacsave should not be a problem as those are leftover configuration files from removed packages.

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