problem with su

[mjsunil]

Hi,
Iam not able to su to root from one user whereas Iam able to su from another user. Has anybody come across this kind of problem. We havent made any configuration changes. It was working properly earlier.

rgds-mjs

[Steven E. Protter]

Check permissions on su

make sure they aare this:
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 47522 Aug 12 2003 /bin/su


the /etc/securetty file may have become trashed in some way or may have been set to block su.

Not if a hacker had your box the first thing he/she might do is disable your ability to log on as root an nail he/she.

check for space on root fs and /var du -h

SEP

[Stuart Browne]

Have you verified the root password by logging in on the console?

[Roberto Polli]

did you check log files looking for an error?
search in /var/log and report error here.
Peace, R>

[Kiyoshi Miyake · Accepted solution]

perhaps pam.
did you change /etc/pam.conf or /etc/pam.d/* ?

or you use *BSD?
so, only wheel group member can su to root.

[mjsunil]

Hi,
I have checked the /etc/pam.d/su and i havent enabled the wheel group and pam.wheel.so. The permission is correct for su and root has permission in /etc/securetty.We have space in /var. In /var/log/messages. we are able to su to root with only one user. I tried to create new users and even they r not able to su to root
rgds-mjs

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

Can you please copy/paste error passage you receive when you try "su -" ?

[Stuart Browne]

Also paste the contents of '/etc/pam.d/su'.

[Marco van den Hout]

just in case, check 'which su' to see where the binary is taken from.

[Robert Binkhorst]

Hi,

Do you have sudo installed? try visudoers..

HTH,

Robert