SCO OpenServer 5.0.5 Shadow Problem

NOTE: This SCO problem should only affect versions of FacetWin PRIOR to version 2.1.c (336) which is now available. If you suffer from the problem below, you can either fix it as described or get a newer version of FacetWin

With the release of SCO OS 5.0.5 a new problem has been introduced that is causing confusion for some of our end users. This technical note is intended to be a "heads up" document to help you quickly and easily recognize and resolve this problem before you get stuck trying to get past this annoyance.

The error occurs primarily with SCO Unix 5.0.5, but has also been known to occur on prior versions of SCO OS 5. A UNIX system file becomes improperly formatted (by an SCO library procedure) and due to this, our emulator rejects all login attempts of users trying to gain access to UNIX via our FacetWin terminal emulator.

In the corrupted UNIX password shadow file, "/etc/shadow" each user has an entry which according to "man shadow" should only have 5 fields separated by 4 colons:

User name - login name like in "/etc/passwd"
Encrypted password - encrypted password, which use to be in the "/etc/passwd" file
Last Changed - number of days since 1/1/70 since the password was last changed
Minimum days - minimum days required between password change
Maximum days - maximum number of days password is valid

For example:

"/etc/shadow":
-----------------------------
clark:fGrf6y780Zrww:9309::
-----------------------------

The problem typically occurs when entries in this file have an improper number of colon separated fields, the UNIX users "nouser" and "listen" both have 7 fields and 6 colons. Other user entries have also been known to have this malady.

For example:

"/etc/shadow":
-----------------------------
nouser:*::::9302:
listen:*::::9302:
-----------------------------

The following symptoms are observed by the FacetWin Terminal user:

"root" user can login in with the FacetWin Terminal but regular users can't, they get the error "invalid password for user"
("root" is above the corruption and is processed correctly)
The syslog file will have complaints from the VTPD that say something like:

Until this problem can be resolved by SCO, the "/etc/shadow" file must be hand edited to correct the file corruption by removing the extra colons.

A corrected example:

"/etc/shadow":
-----------------------------
nouser:*::9302:
listen:*::9302:
-----------------------------

Please let us know if you need further information on this problem. Thanks for using and recommending our product, FacetWin!

	User name	- login name like in "/etc/passwd"
	Encrypted password	- encrypted password, which use to be in the "/etc/passwd" file
	Last Changed	- number of days since 1/1/70 since the password was last changed
	Minimum days	- minimum days required between password change
	Maximum days	- maximum number of days password is valid