topic Re: Cannot su to root in Operating System - HP-UX

Cannot su to root

Mandana Mehrbod — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 06:26:25 GMT

I have created a user account on a HP-UX 11i system but it is impossible to switch user to root from that account. I get this message: su: incorrect password.I created another account at the same time, although there is no differences between these two accounts, I don't have any problems to change to root from the second one. Both accounts were created with useradd. Does anyone know the reason?

Re: Cannot su to root

Cheryl Griffin — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 06:33:50 GMT

Are you able to log directly into the account without an error?

Is the system trusted?
What is the length of the password?

If the password is long, try only the first 8 characters.

Re: Cannot su to root

Mark Grant — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 06:37:02 GMT

Firstly, I'd run a pwck on the passwd file to make sure it is in a reasonable state

Re: Cannot su to root

SureshKumar_2 — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 06:40:57 GMT

Hi

If u have this file, /tcb/files/auth/r/root
then ur system is trusted one.

Try creating the user from SAM, and see, whether u r able to switch user.!

suresh

Re: Cannot su to root

Mandana Mehrbod — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 06:48:14 GMT

Hi everyone,The system is trusted, the password lenght is 9 char and the result from the pwck looked ok. I have created several users (both from SAM end with useradd) but still have the same problem except for one of them that I mentioned in my message. I can't see any difference between that account and the other ones.

Re: Cannot su to root

Robert-Jan Goossens — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 06:50:09 GMT

Hi,

Try the first 8 characters for root as Cheryl suggested.

Robert-Jan

Re: Cannot su to root

Mandana Mehrbod — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 06:54:34 GMT

Unfortunately it didn,t help.

Re: Cannot su to root

RAC_1 — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 07:04:20 GMT

Do you have special chars in password? Such as @ etc? Alo make sure you are using first 8 chars of that password.

If yes change and password and try. Also what gets loggin in sulog when you try su to root from this account?

Anil

Re: Cannot su to root

Bruno Ganino — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 07:19:00 GMT

The su program should have mode 755.
Peraphs You'll have to figure out the right permissions for other files and fix them too.

Bruno

Re: Cannot su to root

John Carr_2 — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 08:10:15 GMT

Hi

If I understand correctly you have two user accounts setup lets call them Jack and Jill

from Jack you can su to root and the password works fine

from Jill you su to root using the same password and receive the message "incorrect password"

this leads me to think its not a password problem.

have these user names been used previously ?

have the users been created with home directories in the same tree path. Are the users directory permissions the same ?

I dont think this is a passwd file problem or permission problem for the "su" command as it would effect both accounts.

John.

Re: Cannot su to root

Mandana Mehrbod — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 08:44:39 GMT

Hi,
I found out what the problem was. The account that had this problem has tcsh as shell and ran /usr/local/coreutils/bin/su instead of /usr/bin/su because it was set so in PATH in the account's .tcshrc. The other account didn't experience the same problem because it's default shell is ksh and according to the .profile it runs the /usr/bin/su. Thank you for taking your time.