>> Hmm... I think you could get by with (see the man pages for each):
>> [...]

Perhaps in 1999 (the date of the message you cited) you could.

These days, I think a lot more is dynamically linked; check all your
executables with ldd - I suspect you'll have to include the dynamic
linker and the necessary library .so files.

> [W]hen calling passwd from the prompt, I get the following error
> message...

> passwd: The file is still busy, try again later.

Just stabbing in the dark, but did you remount / read-write first?

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