Moddwarf ssh - WARNING: Your password has expired

Developers
#1

Hi,

So I am getting this when I ssh to the moddwarf:

WARNING: Your password has expired.
You must change your password now and login again!
Changing password for root

Unfortunately at this point the filesystem is RO so I get:

New password:
Retype password:
passwd: /etc/passwd: Read-only file system
passwd: can't update password file /etc/passwd
Connection to moddwarf.local closed.

Has anyone got any idea of how to get around this? Is there a magic key combination at power up to set it to RW?

Thanks

Andy

#2

Hi Andy,
I just ssh’ed into my Dwarf to see what things look like when all is well, and I can see that the / files-system is mounted read-only:

[root@moddwarf ~]# mount
/dev/mmcblk0p4 on / type ext4 (ro,noatime,nodelalloc,norecovery)
…

Looking at the MOD Wiki SSH page: https://wiki.mod.audio/wiki/Access_MOD_using_SSH confirms that it is normal for / to be mounted read-only and so for /etc/password to be read-only.

This suggests to me that the problem is something else. For example, why should the password expire? By default, this feature is usually disabled by default, on the Dwarf and on every Linux system I have ever used. It seems unlikely, but did you really change the default root password and/or enable expiry?

In any case, if the MOD web-ui is working, I would recommend making a backup of your data via the settings page before you do anything else.

I think it may be necessary to reflash the Dwarf, but I would definitely see if anyone here has any better ideas and first contact MOD support - ‘Help us Obi @jon Kenobi, you’re our only hope’.

Best of luck,
Paul

2 Likes
#3

Actually, thinking about it that’s not quite true: by default the passwords expire after 99,999 days (~273 years) - is there something really weird happening with the date?

1 Like
#4

Hi @pslh

Thanks for the interest and info.

It seems to be caused by changing the password, I flashed it and then changed the password again, exactly the same problem.

Very weird, I’m guessing something to do with it not knowing the real datetime (no battery, no ip based time), then thinking it is existing in the past compared to when the password was changed when trying to log in.

Maybe I am the only person to try changing the password!

2 Likes
#5

I guess that yes :sweat_smile:

I never heard about this problem before in any of our devices, not even faced it myself.
My best suggestion for now is to back up everything on your device and do a factory reset.
Let us know if that solves the issue.

#6

Hi @jon

Yep a factory reset (is that a refresh?) got it back, if I change the password though it goes wrong again!

2 Likes
#7

Why change the password? as you’ve asserted this causes issues.
Since the devices are only locally accessible there’s no need to modify the default password.

1 Like