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solidak

Member

Registered: 2018-07-09

Posts: 8

[SOLVED] `grpck: permission denied` issue

Hey all

I think I've missed up the permissions somewhere on my machine. Running `grpck` is outputting:
```
grpck: Permission denied.
grpck: cannot lock /etc/group; try again later.
```

and `pwck`
```
pwck: Permission denied.
pwck: cannot lock /etc/passwd; try again later.
```

I've started having some issues when I wanted to install a lockscreen app like `i3lock` or `xtrlock`.
i3lock is working but it is not accepting my password at all. I had to switch to tty3 to kill it.

xtrlock is giving me a `password entry has no pwd` error when I run it. In combination with the outputs of `grpck` and `pwck`, I suspect there is an issue with my /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow.

In addition, I have a `/etc/group` and `/etc/group-` files but no `/etc/group.lock` that grpck should complain about. Is this relevant?

Sorry for the bombardment of questions, I'm just thinking I shot myself in the foot here

EDIT: So the original issue with grpck was that it was not run with root privileges. the other issue with `i3lock` and `xtrlock` was a permissions issue since I had broken permissions for `/sbin/unix_chkpwd`. A simple `sudo chmod u+s /sbin/unix/chkpwd` fixed everything

Last edited by solidak (2018-07-26 06:32:40)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: [SOLVED] `grpck: permission denied` issue

That's normal you have to run grpck and pwck as root (they will create the lock file so multiple instances don't concurrently muck around in those files), check if they give you errors.

Issues with your lock screen might be session errors, what does

loginctl show-session $XDG_SESSION_ID

(use code tags to post command output) return for you? How do you log in how do you start i3?

Last edited by V1del (2018-07-09 13:26:34)

solidak

Member

Registered: 2018-07-09

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] `grpck: permission denied` issue

Ah! Sorry, my brain was in Markdown mode

You're right, `sudo grpck` and `sudo pwck` worked just fine (no output)

As for loginctl, here's the output

Id=c3
User=1000
Name=cheese
Timestamp=Mon 2018-07-09 08:42:57 CEST
TimestampMonotonic=15398446
VTNr=2
Seat=seat0
TTY=tty2
Remote=no
Service=gdm-password
Scope=session-c3.scope
Leader=877
Audit=0
Type=x11
Class=user
Active=yes
State=active
IdleHint=no
IdleSinceHint=0
IdleSinceHintMonotonic=0
LockedHint=no

I was GDM to log in to i3. Sometimes, I use GNOME3 when I'm presenting something, it works a bit out-of-the-box, whereas I didn't spend enough time in i3 to have it work with a projector.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: [SOLVED] `grpck: permission denied` issue

GDM is also a lockscreen, I have a feeling there might be some breakage/conflict here, what happens if you don't use GDM and use a proper xinitrc config instead?

Last edited by V1del (2018-07-10 11:06:16)