14.0-RELEASE - conflicts in /etc/passwd results in losing root

taiwan740 · Nov 23, 2023

I'd like to preface this by saying I'm purely a hobbyist and my environment means nothing so it's not a big deal for me. I can reinstall if necessary but wondering if there is an easier fix.

I have a FreeBSD laptop that was running 13.1-RELEASE this morning. I did a freebsd-update (twice) up to 13.2-RELEASE, and then again to 14.0-RELEASE.

During the 14.0-RELEASE installation, it said there are conflicts between what I already had in my old /etc/passwd and what 14.0-RELEASE was trying to write in there, and asked me to resolve the conflicts before it could proceed with the upgrade. As it uses vi I was a bit baffled, but anyway, decided to remove the 13.2-RELEASE section. The 13.2 section only had references to my user, root, and wheel, 14.0 added separate entries for a whole load of stuff so I gathered this was some kind of permissions refactor.

Anyway, after the merge conflicts were "fixed" I now don't have an entry for root in my /etc/passwd file and can't login as root. "toor" is there but don't know the password for that one?

Any known fix, or just blow it away and start again?

elgrande · Nov 23, 2023

what about:
- boot from a 14.0 installation stick
- mount the partition with the rootless passwd file
- copy the root line in /etc/passwd from stick to mount

T-Aoki · Nov 23, 2023

Additional notes with elgrande's reply.
Maybe the conflict was the change of root shell from csh to sh.
What you should have done was to keep original line for root, disposing updated line, but it's too late for now.
And if you are not enough familiar to vi like me, setting EDITOR environment variable to ee would allow you to use ee instead of vi on vipw.

Cath O'Deray · Nov 23, 2023

taiwan740 said:
… hobbyist and my environment means nothing so it's not a big deal for me. I can reinstall if necessary but wondering if there is an easier fix. …

Any known fix, or just blow it away and start again?

It's fixable, the suggestion from elgrande looks good, however it's as easy to:

blow it away, start again with a fresh installation of 14.0-RELEASE
learn about horrors such as merge conflict markers at a later date.

drhowarddrfine · Nov 24, 2023

Too late now but from Colin Percival's blog:

Be careful when merging master.passwd
The default shell for root changed from csh to sh in FreeBSD 14. When you upgrade to FreeBSD 14, freebsd-update will prompt you to merge changes to /etc/master.passwd. Don't just take the new password line for root since it doesn't have a password. Keep your existing line and change the shell (or not, if you prefer to stick with csh).

funkz · Dec 12, 2023

Just wanted to add that I've had this problem too. I thought the password was stored in another file (shadow), and was busy trying to get work done and upgrade my FreeBSD server at the same time so this slipped through. Now I can't login as root or su (as I usually do). Headless server, I'm now going to have to move it and plug in a monitor and resolve it (thanks, elgrande). Be nice if there were some level of warning about this as it's caused a bit of unnecessary effort now.

Cath O'Deray · Dec 14, 2023

taiwan740 said:
… As it uses vi I was a bit baffled, …

You're so polite.

Cath O'Deray · Dec 14, 2023

funkz said:
… Be nice if there were some level of warning about this …

I expect that wrinkles will be ironed out through the holistic plan to remove freebsd-update(8) from FreeBSD base.

T-Aoki · Dec 17, 2023

funkz said:
I thought the password was stored in another file (shadow)

Correct. There areetc/pwd.db and etc/spwd.db. These files are generated from /etc/master.passwd using pwd_mkdb(8).
Running vipw(8) opens /etc/master.passwd using the text editor specified by environment variable EDITOR,once saved and exited, check for integrity of it, if OK, generate etc/pwd.db and etc/spwd.db (and would generate /etc/passwd, too).
See manpage vipw(8), especially FILES section for details.

fraxamo · Dec 18, 2023

To get around the merge issue when upgrading to 14.0 would it work better to change root's shell from /bin/csh to /bin/sh before the upgrade?

covacat · Dec 18, 2023

you can keep your old line
csh still exists

T-Aoki · Dec 18, 2023

fraxamo said:
To get around the merge issue when upgrading to 14.0 would it work better to change root's shell from /bin/csh to /bin/sh before the upgrade?

If you want to say "Can I avoid manual merge if I change root shell to /bin/sh before upgrading?", unfortunately, usually NO.
Usually, root shall have unique password, but there is no password set on src.
So the line shall be different as default (in src version).

meine · Dec 18, 2023

taiwan740 said:
During the 14.0-RELEASE installation, it said there are conflicts between what I already had in my old /etc/passwd and what 14.0-RELEASE was trying to write in there, and asked me to resolve the conflicts before it could proceed with the upgrade. As it uses vi I was a bit baffled, but anyway, decided to remove the 13.2-RELEASE section. The 13.2 section only had references to my user, root, and wheel, 14.0 added separate entries for a whole load of stuff so I gathered this was some kind of permissions refactor.

Anyway, after the merge conflicts were "fixed" I now don't have an entry for root in my /etc/passwd file and can't login as root. "toor" is there but don't know the password for that one?

Resembles what happened here, I also deleted the 13.3-RELEASE section at the same step in the update and for the same reason.

Discovered something happened when using su - to become superuser: there was no question for a password, instantly became root.

Made a new root password as root with passwd and all was back to normal.