* Michael Whapples mwhapples@aim.com [20090613 12:58]:
I noticed that yesterday when I did an install of debian using grml-debootstrap it seemed to fail to set the password of the root account, it seemed to just print out the help message of the chpasswd command. This was using grml installed on a USB drive using grml2usb and the ISO image of grml 2009.05. I also encountered the same when I did the grml2hd installation using the RC2 CD. The only way I was able to log in to the installed system was to boot grml again, mount the drive where I had done the installation and remove the x from the password field of the /etc/passwd file and then reboot back to the HD installation and log in without a password and then set a new password (there may be another way but this is the one I am certain of).
Yeah, this is due a very annoying (and stupid, as in: no clean upgrade path) change in chpasswd.
This seems like a critical bug to me as by default it seems grml2hd and grml-debootstrap leave the installed system unuseable.
This issue has been fixed within grml2hd for the stable release. I'll take care of if for grml-debootstrap, it's recorded as http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue692 - thanks for the report.
regards, -mika-