Monthly Archives: April 2012

pwd_mkdb: /etc/spwd.db.tmp: Inappropriate file type or format

i had harddisk problem in my ftp server, it couldn’t finish its booting process, it appeared that one of my harddisk get corrupted. to solve this we usually use fsck. since it has more than one haddisk of 1.5 terra, i use fsck -y option. this option will allow OS to simply answer yes for each question asked in fsck proccess. so we can leave it, and get back tomorrow morning 🙂

after i find what harddisk that cause problem, i dismount it and get my ftp server work well, but whe i tried to change password for some user i get error like this after i do passwd command :

New Password:
Retype New Password:
pwd_mkdb: /etc/spwd.db.tmp: Inappropriate file type or format
passwd: pam_chauthtok(): error in service module

at first i got confused to find the error, it is in the last line, or the pwd_mkd thing, after googling for a while i got the answer.

you can use this if you face same problem
pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd

it will enable u to change any user password 🙂