Hi,

First post, so please don't flame me if this is stupid. I just can't seem to find an answer, and it has to be the most basic thing to do.

We run an NT4.0 network here, and I'm trying to set up a low cost Linux back up server. All I need this Linux server to do is allow 2 NT servers to copy their data to it every night. My plan is then to hook up 5 external hard drives via a USB hub to the Linux server, and back up to one hard drive each week night. My Linux Dist of choice (since I already have it installed) is Fedora Core 3.

First off, if you guys think this is stupid, please let me know? Back up on our NT servers is no longer reliable, and I like the idea of all the data being backed up into one place.

From an administrative perspective, I'd like to allow one other user access to my new Fedora Core 3 server, so she can confirm backups are working e.t.c. But I don't want her to have access to all the files (mainly my boss's files). So I need to add her as a user, and just can't figure out how to do it!

I started by trying to add myself - and can not get it to work. I add myself, set the password and set my Login Shell to /bin/bash. It appears my home directory is created automatically, and permissions are set.....

So I log off the server "Actions/LogOut" and then try to log in with the user credentials I've just created, and it won't let me. I know on an NT server, you have to give Local Log On permissions for a user to be able to log on locally. Is it the same with Linux? If so, where would I do that?

Again, I'm sorry. This is either a very weird problem (which I doubt) or I'm missing something in a big way. I've spent hours searching, and can't find anything that helps me with my limited knowledge of Linux.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. And oh yeah, I'm loving Fedora for everything else. Samba is working great - really slick!

TIA,

Mark.

Interesting. I understand you are now loggin in in graphical mode? If so, press ctrl+alt+f1. A text mode login screen should appear. Try to log in using it (as a result you should get a command prompt). If you succeed (as one of the users you can't log in graphically) it means it's your login manager configuration. If not, it's security level. Please try it now.

Hi Mara,

When pressing Cntrl, Alt, F1 I do indeed go away from the GUI, and to a command prompt. I typed in the root information just to see what it 'should' look like if logon worked - all was good. Logged out, and then tried my own personal user information, and it said "Logon Incorrect". So based on your notes, it must be the security level.... I will research how to promote? my logon on LQ and see if I can get it to work. Thanks for the lead!

Mark.

Hi Mara,

When looking through my GUI, I noticed that my password had been locked (probably from too many attempts). So I unlocked it, and tried your suggestion again. This time, I didn't get the same error. It shot across the screen: "authentication service can not retrieve authentication info" I tried it several times to try and read that line, and eventually said it had 'respawned' too quickly and was going to time out for 5 minutes.

Not sure if that helps at all, but I'll keep looking

Thanks very much

Mark

I have also seen another problem very similar to what you describe. It happened to me with Slackware 10.0 ( I think). The situation is very much the same, you create the account (using the graphical environment) but then it does not work.
What I discorver is that for some weird reason although the system indicated that I would be using "/bin/bash" when it actually wrote to the system it only entered "/bin/ba". Needless to say, I was unable to log in.
The solution for me was to log in as root and create the user account with "useradd" at the console.

You may want to give that a try.

Rick

If that's the problem (look into /etc/passwd to check), you don't need to recreate users, just edit /etc/passwd.

Well, I'm not sure if that was the problem or not, but using the GUI, I deleted the user / group and home folder. Then recreated it using the terminal mode (text view), and now it's working!

Thanks very much for all the help. These little things are what slowly teach us about the core of the OS. I'm still a LOOOOONG way from knowing what I'm doing, but I'll keep poking along. It's fun, and challenging!....just as long as they 'eventually work'

Thanks again!

Mark.