# user password not recognized anymore



## multix (Mar 21, 2019)

Hi - I have a very strange issue. On my lpatop, I cannot "login" anymore using my standard user and the password as authentication, I believe it is related to the upgrade from 11 to 12.0-RELEASE-p3, but I am unsure. I did not notice immediately since, using a laptop, I have fingerprint authentication and that one still works.
I cannot ssh or telnet to the computer, nor login - if I disable fingerprint authentication.

At first, I thought to have forgotten the password - but I changed it from root using [FONT=courier new]passwd xxx[/FONT].
Root user still works with password but my own user not. I tried changing the password several times, no avail

If I authenticate with fingerprint and then run [FONT=courier new]passwd[/FONT], the password (even the one changed through the root account to the said user) is not accepted.


What could be going wrong?


----------



## SirDice (Mar 21, 2019)

How did you upgrade? If you used a source upgrade and made mistakes with mergemaster(8) you may have removed your account.


----------



## D-FENS (Mar 21, 2019)

For some reason on one of my machines the password database got out of sync during 12.0 upgrade. I think I made the mistake, mentioned by SirDice.
In my case what helped is using the command `vipw` to make the password db consistent again. Your user account should be visible there. If not, `adduser` should allow you to add it again and set the password.
Backup your /etc before making the changes and make sure the UID and GID are the same.


----------



## multix (Mar 21, 2019)

I did uprade with `freebsd-update` not through a source upgrade.
My user is still there, as said, I can login using fingerprint authentication... `vipw` shows my account. Instead of an *, there is a long encoded password.

If I run `chpass` my full name shows up as well as default shell, so I suppose that part is sane. Could the shadow password database be out of sync somehow? Or perhaps the issue is of different nature - I hoped changing the password would align things.


----------



## malavon (Mar 21, 2019)

There have been a few people (of which I am one) who had an issue when upgrading from 11.2 to 12.0. 
Run a `pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd` and see if it's fixed. It most likely will be.


----------



## multix (Mar 21, 2019)

malavon : thank you, that command fixed it.
A dangerous happening during the upgrade! Luckily fingerprinting access worked, otherwise I would have been locked out.


----------

