No Shell

[Acxiom Unix Team]

Hi,

I have an issue that i have never come across before. I have 1 user on a server who cannot login. When they connect using Putty and put in the login id and password the session is terminated. It is as if they had /usr/bin/false in /etc/passwd but they dont. This is the password entry;

wrops:p3ixIRQI1gw4.:8101:154:Ops,,,:/home/wrops:/usr/bin/sh

Also, if i try to su to this user i get a reply

su: No shell
Memory fault

This is only happening with this one user and i wonder if anyone has come across this before and might have some ideas on where to look??

FYI, We are using NIS so i dont know if that makes any difference.

[Tingli]

Does this user have a home directory?

[Duncan Edmonstone]

1. Check that passwd file doesn't have any strange chars on that line by using:

cat -v /etc/passwd

2. Check permissions on / are 755

3. Check that permissions on /usr and /usr/bin are 555

HTH

Duncan

[Mark S Meadows]

Hi Andrew,

What are the permissions of the /usr/bin/sh :

/home/markme/bin# ll /usr/bin/sh
-r-xr-xr-x 2 bin bin 681016 Jun 18 2008 /usr/bin/sh

If the shell appears to be ok, validate the passwd file with 'pwck' in case there is something on toward - is this user the last entry in the file ?

Regards,

Mark

[OldSchool]

you didn't happen to mention if that user is the only one using /usr/bin/sh.

also, what do the following return:

1) ls -l /usr/bin/sh
2) ls -l /etc/shells
3) if (2) finds a file, then
cat /etc/shells

Can you set that user to something like ksh, and if so, does that work?

[Acxiom Unix Team]

I have found the problem. Someone yesterday had changed the ownerships of /home from root:root to uedna:ukcs.

Luckily 95% of users on this box are in the same group, hence no problems reported.

So changed it back and it all works now. Thanks to all help and suggestions offered.