Re: Unable to su root

[Phil Welch]

Bob,
 
You nailed it.  Thanks.
 
I had to setuid and root.wheel ownership when I originally setup the user, but 
"something", which I presume to have been the SuSE online update, unset both.  
Since I "knew" that I had made these settings, it didn't occur to this 64 year 
old that "perhaps" they had somehow been reverted to their original settings.  
After re-resetting them everything seems to be working normally.  I got up this 
morning expected to have to do a reinstall but fortunately your email saved the 
day.  Sorry for the bother; and thanks to both you and Paul.
 
Best Regards,
 
Phil Welch


Bob Proulx <address@hidden> wrote:
Phil Welch wrote:
> Although cause and effect are not clear, it seems that
> after a SuSE update, or perchance, after changing both
> the root and (single) user passwords, that I am now
> unable to su from a normal user due to incorrect
> password.

Are shadow passwords enabled? Is /bin/su suid-root and able to read
the shadow file? Does the normal password file contain an 'x' and the
actual password reside in /etc/shadow? That would match the stated
behavior.

> However, although I cannot su with the root password,
> I can login with the root password.

Makes me thing the suid-root bit is not set on the su command.
Because login does not use su at all.

> The user is a member of users and wheel.

I don't think that should be needed.

What errors are recorded in the syslog? On my machine that would be
/var/log/auth.log but on yours it is probably /var/log/messages or
some such.

Also, can you verify the following information?

su --version
type su
ls -ld $(type -p su)
If the above is /bin/su then:
rpm -qf $(type -p su)
rpm -V $(rpm -qf $(type -p su))

Bob



Phil Welch
address@hidden
(661) 945-6962