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gdm package

all 10 Ubuntu 9.10 machines recently give incorrect password error

Asked by brainpointin

i m writing frm india i am using ubuntu 9.10 frm last 2 yrs but now whenever i start it it says pww incorrect although again i re-install again it says the same thing & not on 1 machine but on all 10 comp of my institute it gives the same error ,so plz tell me whether the version has expired or ther is osme other probs coz i m using it for so long

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Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure) said : 		#1

Ubuntu 9.10 has indeed reached end-of-life and is no longer supported, and you should update to (or reinstall with) at least Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (other supported versions are Ubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 11.04).

However, this is certainly not intended behavior. While end-of-life releases are not supported with security updates and are generally not supported on this and other forums, they are not designed to deliberately break.

If your machines are authenticating against a central server, then the problem is almost certainly with the central server. If local authentication is being used then this problem is extremely strange, but you could try resetting the passwords (see http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/resetpassword).

Please note that I am only providing this information in order to support updating from Ubuntu 9.10 to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (after all, the standard way to update is with the Update Manager, and it's hard to run the Update Manager if you cannot log in). If you were experiencing any problem that didn't interfere with updating, I would tell you to update first, and see if the problem still occurs.

Another way to update is with the command-line, by running do-release-upgrade. While you cannot log in graphically, perhaps you can log in with the command-line. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch to a virtual console, then enter your username and press enter, then enter your password and press enter (you won't see any placeholder characters like * as you enter it, but that's OK, just type it in and press enter).

When you get a shell prompt (some text followed by $ _), you can run these commands, one after the other, to upgrade from Ubuntu 9.10 to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. You need to be connected to the Internet when you run them.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo do-release-upgrade

It's actually only the last command that upgrades to the next version of Ubuntu. The previous commands bring your software up to date within your current release. If they are unable to download software, don't worry--you can continue on to the final command.

Alternatively, you might simply want to wipe the disk and install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (or Ubuntu 10.10, or Ubuntu 11.04), and see if you experience the problem with those releases.

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