I've screwed up my access as root
 

Linux version 2.6.12-1.1381_FC3 on a dell C600 laptop BIOS A23

My root password is working for those applications that require it. But I can't su i get "su: /bin: Permission denied"

And if I log in as root it dumps me in a few seconds.

Any ideas?


Thanks

In some distros your user need to belong in to a "wheel" group, in order to use "su".

I have previously had no trouble with either su or logging in as root. I've done something but I don't know what. I was playing about with "chsh" just before. Do you think that's relevant?

Quite likely ... what did you chsh to? And whose shell did
you modify?

Quick fix: chsh the users shell as root (or edit /etc/passwd
directly ... ;})...

Cheers,
Tink

Ohhh K. You did see the newbie bit?

It's a single user system so I assume I just changed my user shell. I changed from bash to sh and back. Doesn't your quickfix require me to log in as root? If I could do that I wouldn't have a problem.

How would editing /etc/passwd help? The password works for any system apps that require root access but I can't login as root.

I think I'm really stuffed. I can't change anything unless I'm "root" and I can't get su to work or login as root. Should the first line of /etc/passwd be:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin

?

Or should it be root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash ?

Oh, you changed root's shell to /bin -- that's rather bad since /bin is a directory, not a shell. Try using su with the -s option to specify a real shell, e.g. /bin/bash.

If that fails there's always the option of booting with a CD
in rescue mode and editing root's shell from there ...
Note: the su on slack doesn't have a -s option.

Cheers,
Tink

Thanks Loads. I did the rescue thing and I can log in as root and am ALL POWERFUL. SOON YOU WILL COWER BEFORE ME BWA HAHAHAH!

Sorry...

... got carried away.

Thanks again

Whats the affero thing? I clicked but just got http://www.avira.com/?

My bad ... must have somehow screwed up the link in the
sig :) ... try again!

Affero is a rating system for open-source supportniks.


Cheers,
Tink