Unix administration - restore passwd from backup

Author

restore passwd from backup

ttepandi@gmail.com

2007-05-10, 7:19 pm

Can anyone give me an idea of what to expect if I did a restore of
the /etc/passwd file from a backup? We are running a service on our
Linux box that does nightly backups. Are there any other files I
should back up? Is this a bad idea? Why or why not?

We have a reason to believe that due to adding a user and modifying
the user settings in passwd to have root access we no longer can
access the machine as root nor the new userid over SSH.

ANY insight would be greatly appreciated.

Tom.

Bit Twister

2007-05-10, 7:19 pm

On 10 May 2007 12:55:00 -0700, ttepandi@gmail.com wrote:
> Can anyone give me an idea of what to expect if I did a restore of
> the /etc/passwd file from a backup? We are running a service on our
> Linux box that does nightly backups. Are there any other files I
> should back up? Is this a bad idea? Why or why not?

If I wanted to restore passwd, I would pull
/etc/passwd
/etc/group
/etc/gshadow
/etc/shadow