su root permission denied

stardotstar · 08-12-2006, 03:40 AM

Rather then exhuming this thread from 2004!!
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=208467

I thought I might ask this since I have not had it happen to me before and google was not much help.

When I

Code:

$su
Password:
su: Permission denied
Sorry.

this is a new install and I can sudo su but not su directly

the other thread said I had to be in the wheel group but since this is deprecated I made myself a member of root to no avail...

Suggestions?

TIA
Will

dambla · 08-12-2006, 03:48 AM

i'm not sure but i think there is a file called /etc/security/console.perms (or something like that) that limits who's allowed to su to root.

le: also check out /etc/pam.d/su.

robbbert · 08-12-2006, 10:06 AM

Quote:

this is a new install

Of what Linux distribution?

tgo · 08-12-2006, 11:15 AM

Did you ever set a root password? do sudo su then passwd and change the password and try again.

stardotstar · 08-12-2006, 08:42 PM

OK, thanks for all that. The distro is Gentoo and has never happened before for me with Gentoo installs - something subtle I have done differently this time.

I am able to login as root so I do know the passwd.

I will investigate the above suggestions

Will

dgkamp · 08-20-2006, 02:20 PM

Yeah me too! I followed the same path as you too: Make the user a member of root by executing 'usermod -G root (username)'. I was thinking that root must be the wheel group... But no - this didn't work.

Finally I dug into the gentoo handbook and found in chapter 11 a listing for useradd that used the option '-G users,wheel,audio'. Aha! There it is: The wheel group is named "wheel" (duh!! How come it took me 2 hours to figure that out). So just execute 'usermod -G wheel username'. This Gentoo is a lot of work, but I like it 'cause it really is a learning experience. Don.

stardotstar · 08-20-2006, 08:24 PM

yep, that's where I ended up too.

Its a case of not seeing what's right there in front of me - recently the wheel became deprecated in Debian and I simply never thought to look there - once I added user to the group all was well...

Live and learn and learn again

Thanks for your reply