I have a sco 5.0.5 box and it hangs on boot at the Checking Password and Protected System Databases.

I can get in in sigle user mode and tried to run authck -a, but it hangs as well. This is an old box that i just inherited yesterday and there are no backups for it.

thanks for you help

I can't resist, did the previous owner meet an untimely death?

Try running each option of authck separately, it may give more insight into which file is corrupted.
You can patch the files with vi

I may be mistaken but seem to recall an issue when the password database and shadow database entries get out of order. In those of mine that have been corrupted by software installations it was a matter of editing the password file to get them aligned.

I can guess that the previous support people have moved on to something else and no longer want to support SCO.
That has happened to me several times, even long before the current issues.

Thanks. Running authck with various swithes i was able to narrow it down to an entry in the /etc/passwd file. Removed the entry and the assoicated enty in the pasword protected db and everything is working.