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Old 04-25-2004, 05:56 PM   #1
darin3200
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Can't su into root as normal user


I added a normal user when I first installed Gentoo and I was always able to su to get root access. But recently I have been unable to get root access using su. I have checked my /etc/group and I am in wheel.
Any ideas on how to fix this
Thanks
 
Old 04-25-2004, 06:46 PM   #2
SciYro
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is su in /sbin or /bin?
 
Old 04-25-2004, 06:52 PM   #3
darin3200
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/bin
 
Old 04-25-2004, 07:17 PM   #4
quatsch
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what actually happens when you use the
su
command? any error messages?
 
Old 04-25-2004, 07:39 PM   #5
darin3200
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I type in my root password and I get

Quote:
su: Authentication failure
Sorry.
 
Old 04-25-2004, 10:38 PM   #6
quatsch
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can you log in as root at all? Say from a text terminal.
 
Old 04-25-2004, 11:13 PM   #7
Robert0380
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{DELETED}
 
Old 04-26-2004, 07:37 AM   #8
darin3200
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Quote:
Originally posted by quatsch
can you log in as root at all? Say from a text terminal.
Yeh, i can log out of my user account and then log in as root, but not su from the user account.
 
Old 04-26-2004, 11:26 AM   #9
quatsch
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I found this:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/.../msg00928.html
seems like it's the same problem and has something to do with
/etc/pam.d/su
 
Old 04-26-2004, 01:53 PM   #10
zorba4
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In AIX there is an option when creating a user : "user can su" (yes or not), and "another user can asu to this user" (yes or not).
Is there such an option in Linux ?
 
Old 04-27-2004, 08:04 PM   #11
darin3200
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Quote:
Originally posted by quatsch
I found this:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/.../msg00928.html
seems like it's the same problem and has something to do with
/etc/pam.d/su
I checked the /etc/pam.d/su file and I don't have the line give by the person the debain mailing list
 
Old 04-28-2004, 02:07 AM   #12
Nishtya
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Admittedly know nothing of Gentoo and am newbie, but are you using KDE? Have you recently upgraded to 3.2.2? There is a known bug:
http://www.kde.org/info/3.2.2.php#binary
Perhaps related?
 
Old 06-10-2004, 02:54 PM   #13
darin3200
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Sorry for the seriously late reply, I had the problem before kde was installed, I have the following
Code:
#%PAM-1.0
auth       required	/lib/security/pam_rootok.so 
# If you want to restrict users begin allowed to su even more,
# create /etc/security/suauth.allow (or to that matter) that is only
# writable by root, and add users that are allowed to su to that
# file, one per line.
#auth       required     /lib/security/pam_listfile.so item=ruser sense=allow onerr=fail file=/etc/security/suauth.allow

# Uncomment this to allow users in the wheel group to su without
# entering a passwd.
#auth       sufficient   /lib/security/pam_wheel.so use_uid trust

# Alternatively to above, you can implement a list of users that do
# not need to supply a passwd with a list.
#auth       sufficient   /lib/security/pam_listfile.so item=ruser sense=allow onerr=fail file=/etc/security/suauth.nopass

# Comment this to allow any user, even those not in the 'wheel'
# group to su
auth       required     /lib/security/pam_wheel.so use_uid nullok

auth       required	/lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth nullok

account    required	/lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth nullok

password   required	/lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth nullok

session    required	/lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth nullok
session    optional	/lib/security/pam_xauth.so
I have also tried adding the line
Code:
auth       required     /lib/security/pam_unix.so nullock
but this prompts me for the password twice and gives the same error
 
Old 03-18-2010, 11:03 AM   #14
geekgirl16
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another solution

I found this post while searching for a solution to the same problem. My circumstances were a little different and the solution that worked for me may be relevant to someone else.

My OS is CentOS 5.4 in a production environment with several users who have access to the server for development so adding users to the wheel group in /etc/group is not an ideal solution. We like to try to keep our install as standard as possible across all servers. To that end, here is what I did to troubleshoot

checked permissions on /bin/su. They should be set as setuid...rwsr-xr-x. To make them this way, run chmod u+s /bin/su.

If that works then cat or vi the /etc/pam.d/su file. When I compared this file on the system that didn't work with one that did, I found that the working system had the following line:

#auth required pam_wheel.so use_uid

On the server that didn't work, this line was there but it was not commented out. Changing it to comment it out fixed the issue for me.
 
  


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