Authentication token manipulation error on passwd, config fails

[Fishbowlkraken]

Hello, I've been trying to get this config release to work on my Sylvania WM8505 using a 16GB SD card (could that be the issue? I'm very low on 8GB cards and I'd seen some people had success with 16), and after several repeated attempts all progress is stopped at this point. I was initially going to include a log file, only to find the installer fails to mount /proc, which apparently keeps it from writing logs to the systemd journal? I confess I'm not particularly familiar with systemd so I'm not sure if that's exactly what's happening, but regardless I can't seem to find a full log of the console output on startup so I'm including a picture of the error I took using Night Sight so as to capture the very low contrast of the screen, because it drops the brightness to minimum during the boot process.

I've had a functioning Stretch environment that I sort of bodged Buster components onto from the michelinus repository for several years now, and wanted to give it a more full upgrade to Bookworm as a fun little project, but I can't seem to get past this error. Any advice would be appreciated.

[wh0]

• the setup script doesn't run systemd nor journald, so there are many reasons that it's not making logs, unfortunately.
• if the setup script https://github.com/wh0/bookconfig/blob/master/ship/sbin/init fails, it should fall back to a root shell, in case you need to fix some things
• various searching for the "authentication token manipulation error" point to changing the filesystem mount options or the passwd and shadow file mode, can you check that the root filesystem is rw?
• mainline kernel https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v6.7/drivers/video/fbdev/wm8505fb.c#L342 initializes the contrast quite low. I have this config file https://github.com/wh0/bookconfig/blob/master/ship/etc/udev/rules.d/10-display.rules to increase it on boot, but this setup script runs before udevd starts so unfortunately it's all done in the dark