[00:18] <Dotted> how do you create a new user on ubuntu 10.10 with a blank password? all my attempts using passwd, editing /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow has "su" still asking for a password even if its blank
[00:24] <flaccid> Dotted: use sudo with the ubuntu user and adduser
[00:25] <Dotted> the user is already created
[00:25] <flaccid> what shell does the user have in /etc/passwd?
[00:32] <Dotted> /bin/bash
[00:33] <flaccid> are you doing su from root?
[00:33] <Dotted> yeah from an init script
[00:33] <Dotted> http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Server_startup_script#Script
[00:33] <flaccid> check logs to see what the issue is i guess
[00:34] <flaccid> maybe it needs to be a system user or something
[00:34] <flaccid> add -x to the init script to see how it bombs out too
[00:35] <flaccid> someone needs to package that software
[00:41] <Dotted> http://pastie.org/1637811
[00:44] <flaccid> [ root == ubuntu ] is incorrect bash syntax
[00:44] <flaccid> causes [: 1: root: unexpected operator
[00:44] <flaccid> also it does su to ubuntu user after that and not root user
[00:45] <flaccid> thats intentional but yeah. this is not a good init script at all.
[00:45] <Dotted> well ideally it would su to minecraft user, just used ubuntu here for testing
[00:47] <flaccid>  if [ "$ME" == "$USERNAME" ] ; then should be  if [ "$ME" = "$USERNAME" ] ; then
[00:50] <Dotted> http://pastie.org/1637831
[00:54] <flaccid> run su - ubuntu -c cd /home/ubuntu/minecraft and also screen -dmS minecraft java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+CMSIncrementalPacing -XX:ParallelGCThreads=1 -XX:+AggressiveOpts -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui
[00:54] <flaccid> then check ps
[00:54] <flaccid> at least one of the processes is dying thus why if ps ax | grep -v grep | grep -v -i SCREEN | grep $SERVICE > /dev/null fails
[00:55] <flaccid> though this is all the wrong way to do this stuff but meh..
[01:04] <Dotted> Password:
[01:04] <Dotted> su: Authentication failure
[01:05] <Dotted> and thats the problem in a nutshell, despite blank password it still asks for it
[01:05] <Dotted> happends on both ubuntu and minecraft user
[01:06] <flaccid> that would be expected. its meant to be run under root.
[01:07] <Dotted> minecraft_server.jar is meant to be run as root?
[01:08] <Dotted> that seems highly unlikely
[01:17] <flaccid> no the init script. as you can see there is a USERNAME variable and it uses su -c to run it under this username
[01:17] <flaccid> you won't be able to su properly without root
[01:17] <flaccid> su != sudo
[01:20] <Dotted> well the init script is already run as root
[01:21] <Dotted> sudo sh -x /etc/init.d/minecraft start
[01:21] <flaccid> su to root. then see if you can su to the user you want to su to, if it succeeds well..
[01:23] <flaccid> if you are doing su as root, afaik, it should never ask for a password..
[01:23] <flaccid> i guess maybe need to check something like /etc/pamd.d/su though
[01:24] <flaccid> you might like to also ask in #ubuntu and ##bash as this isn't really cloud related.
[01:26] <Dotted> didnt get a response in #ubuntu, anyways getting too late for me, thanks for all your help