[CLUE-Tech] groupadd, usermod, etc. prompting root to enter password

[Matt Gushee]

On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 07:50:36AM -0700, David Anselmi wrote:
> >
> >I updated some packages on my laptop the other day, and now I get this:
> >
> >    # groupadd -g 29 audio
> >    Password: 
> >
> >    [ and if I enter a password, it prompts me for a new password,
> >      as if I had invoked 'passwd' ]
> >
> >Say wha?
> 
> Did you look at any docs about how groupadd is supposed to work?

Internals, no. I checked the manual page and did a Google search.

> Google 
> seems to think that groupadd puts a password hash in /etc/gshadow, 
> perhaps for use with the newgrp command.

Google is thinking now? God help us ;-)

Seriously though, do you happen to recall what search string you used to
find that? I didn't find anything remotely useful.

And anyway, what would be the point of entering a password for a group?
Groups don't have passwords, right?

> Probably you can leave it 
> blank and get the behavior you expect.

Maybe. But I now know for sure that the password prompt should not be
happening. I performed the following test:

 1. Downloaded (to another machine) the shadow package, same version I
    had installed. 

 2. Unpacked the archive.

 3. Checked the MD5 sum of groupadd; the newly downloaded one was the
    same as the strangely-behaving one.

 4. cd'ed to the newly unpacked usr/sbin directory and ran:

      # groupadd phred

    (remember, this on a different box) 
    No password prompt.

 5. Copied the package over to the strange-behavior machine and repeated
    steps 2-4 there. This time I *did* get a password prompt.

So evidently something is hosed on one of the machines. Could it be a
shared library? At this point, I think not. I ran 'ldd' on groupadd on
the two machines, then checked which packages provide the libraries.
They're all from pam and glibc, and I have the same versions of those
two packages on the two boxes. MD5 checksums are also the same for all
those libraries, so it seems likely that the problem is somewhere else.
But where?

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Haven Rock Press            Horses bear manure through
Englewood, Colorado, USA        its fields;   
books at havenrock.com         When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)