[hylafax-users] Mac OS X chpass -a dilemma

[Michael Glaesemann <grzm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all!

I'm currently attempting to install HylaFAX on a 450 MHz G4 PowerMac 
running Mac OS X 10.3.8. The installation has gone relatively smoothly 
up to this point. I've found the documentation[1] very good and 
helpful.

However, I'm running into a problem running the following command, 
necessary to add the uucp user to /etc/passwd.

$ sudo chpass -a "uucp:*:10:66::0:0:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/usr/bin/false"

I've added /usr/bin/false in the SHELL field, following advice offered 
on a bulletin board[2] in response to this same problem.

Here's the error I get:
chpass: -a is only supported for /etc/master.passwd
chpass: rebuilding the database...
pwd_mkdb: corrupted entry
pwd_mkdb: at line #1
pwd_mkdb: /etc/pw.ncpFK1: Inappropriate file type or format
chpass: /etc/master.passwd: unchanged

I see another user ran into the same problem just a few weeks ago [3] 
(appears to be the same person as the original poster of [2]). The 
command itself appears to be fine. When I purposely mistype the chpass 
command, I get a different error:

$ sudo chpass -a "uucp:*:10:66::0:0:uucp:/var/spool/uucp"chpass: -a is 
only supported for /etc/master.passwd
chpass: corrupted entry

Note that in this second case the error is raised by chpass, rather 
than pwd_mkdb. This leads me to think the /etc/passwd file is corrupt 
as it is, even before attempting to add the uucp user via chpass.

Are there any relatively recent Mac OS X success stories out there? I'd 
love to figure out a way around this, perhaps even writing a patch that 
uses lookupd on Mac OS  X rather than grepping /etc/passwd (as I gather 
may be happening from reading the archives and bugzilla entries).

Any hints? Suggestions? Pointers to information would be much 
appreciated.

Thanks for your time,

Michael Glaesemann
grzm myrealbox com

[1] http://www.hylafax.org/howto/misc/installnotes.html#OSX
[2] http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49285
[3] http://www.hylafax.org/archive/2005-02/msg00046.html


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