Authentication issues

[yebar16037]

I have pretty limited Linux experience, and most of it centers around Debian based distros. I have a pretty fresh install of CentOS 7 (Recreating a legacy system for dumb reasons) I installed x, xrdp, and a few other packages. The problem we are having is authentication seems like it breaks for the accounts I've provisioned and for root. Cant log into the console, ssh, or over xrdp. I end up having to boot it up in single user mode and reset the root password, which fixes it for a couple logins, but then it breaks again. This is a VM running on ESXi 8, when accessing the console ive used both the web console and the installed remote console utility.

Im at a loss here, Im not sure where to start looking. https://kodi.software/ https://dltutuapp.com/tutuapp-download/

[TrevorH]

Look in the output from aureport -a for entries around the times of your lockouts. Use ausearch -a nnnn to see more detail about each entry in that list, substituting the number on the right end of the aureport output for nnnn in the ausearch command. Most likely you are corrupting teh selinux context on either or both of /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow and selinux then denies access to it.

Do not attempt to manipulate passwords using any tool other than the passwd command. If you use passwd from a single user boot or from emergency mode then you will need to boot and append 'enforcing=0' to the kernel command prompt and once booted in permissive mode, then use restorecon -RFv /etc/passwd /etc/shadow /etc/group to reset the context to the correct thing. Once that's done, either reboot in enforcing mode or run setenforce 1 to switch to enforcing mode on the current boot.