Cant open terminal or synaptic

[shane97]

Hi
I have Debian jessie installed on my computer. Problem is I cant open any terminal applications or synaptic. I have tried both xfce4-terminal or xterm. I think I know the cause of this problem. In /etc/passwd I found this line

Code: Select all

shane:x:1000:1000:shane,,,:/home/shane:/bin/false

I cant find a way to replace 'false' with 'bash'. can you help? Thanks.

[Segfault]

Use vipw utility as root. The real question is why it was set to false?

[GarryRicketson]

Have you tried :
<ctrl+alt+f1>
to open a terminal
Actually <ctrl+alt+f1> thru f7 should work,
you then login , as root
or as a user and use sudo,
Actually I think you are going to
have to use root, and the root password,
"shane", if that is the normal user probably will
not be able to login, since the path for the password is
botched.
Then you can use a editor, like VI, pico, nano,... to edit any
files you need to.
How did your computer get into this state ?
I mean on a normal install, accessing the terminal
is not a problem,...
It seems like maybe there is something wrong, and some details
you are not telling us.

Re: Cant open terminal or synaptic

Post by Segfault » 2016-12-02 10:21
Use vipw utility as root. The real question is why it was set to false?

Exactly,....How did it get changed ?

[shane97]

Use vipw utility as root. The real question is why it was set to false?

I have changed it now everything is fine didnt know about vi so thanks to both of you.

How did your computer get into this state ?

I was playing around and i messed up and fixed it too. thats how you learn linux right?

[Segfault]

Actually vipw does not necessarily run vi, it runs $EDITOR.

[GarryRicketson]

I was playing around and i messed up and fixed it too. thats how you learn linux right?

That is good you fixed it,
well , it is good when we learn from our mistakes.