Linux – I can no longer login as root user (Raspberry Pi running Raspbian)

debian-wheezylinuxraspberry pi

Raspberry Pi running Raspbian (2014-01-07)

The error seems to have come from nowhere, as I was trying to log in as root via SSH (yes I have it activated – for now) I got the message "Access Denied" which felt wrong since I am the owner of the raspberry pi, I had set up the whole thing and I was the one who created the user's password. I went to the physical Raspberry Pi, hooked it up to a monitor, and tried to log in.

What followed was a failed attempt to access my pi, well, I could log in, but I was immediately met with the "MyHostName login:"

What I saw on-screen, step by step:

"MyHostName login:"

I entered "root" to log in as that user

"Password:" I entered my password and hit return.

Last login: Fri Mar 28 14:38:11 CET 2014 on tty1
Linux MyHostName 3.10.34+ #660 PREEMPT TUe Mar 25 15:04:00 GMT 2014 armv61

The programs included with the Debian Gnu/Linux [...]
permitted by applicable law.
No directory, logging in with Home=/
Cannot execute /root:bin:bash: No such file or directory

Raspbian GNU/Linux 7 MyHostName tty

MyHostName login:

As you can see I can, well not quite but still, log in – but I am immediately signed out again.

Unfortunately, I have not set up other sudoers so I can not access the /etc/passwd to try and correct whatever's wrong.

I had finally set it up as a LAMP-server, everything was up and running and now this…
All I hope is that I don't have to re-flash the SD.

Best Answer

This problem isn't related to the root password, it's related to the shell in /etc/passwd:

/root:bin:bash:

Your shell in /etc/passwd needs to exist, and should match an entry in /etc/shells.

Also, it appears the general format of your /root line is amiss, as it cannot identify the home directory field.

If single user mode doesn't work, you can always boot into some live device, such as USB drive, mount the / filesystem and edit /etc/passwd directly. The root line should look something like:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

Solved

I didn't expect to find a solution before anyone posted an answer but this is what I did to get around this. I didn't fix it but I found a way to circumvent it.

By hitting Ctrl + Alt + f1 simultaneously, it will open up a terminal and ask you for your login and password. Your login name might be different that the one it actually displays when you login normally. You can list all accounts by using:

cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd

Once I logged in, I tried creating another account with the name "test1" and password "test". For some reason it managed to work and I was able to log into the desktop (I still have no idea why! maybe it didn't like my user id).

sudo useradd test1
sudo passwd test1

I then gave the new test1 account admin privelages and then tested it to see if I could still login. It still worked so I figured I'd use the "test" account as my main account. You can give any account permissions with:

sudo adduser "USERID" sudo

I guess you can get the jist, delete the user that you can't log into. You can also change the name of your test account with:

sudo usermod -l "new name" "old-name"

to delete an account its

sudo userdel "USERID"

If you have files on your other user, I think you should be able to access it with the new sudo user that you created which means you can manually move/clone them.

If anyone can work out why it might have happened, I'd appreciate it, I don't think Ubuntu preffers one name over another, I tried with multiple different accounts and out of the usernames I tried including "the-mighty-d", "bl4ck-m4mba" or just "dan", "test1" was the only one that worked even though they were created in exactly the same way. (-_-")

Best Answer

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