Cannot su to root

[Mandana Mehrbod]

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?

[Cheryl Griffin]

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.

[Mark Grant]

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

[SureshKumar_2]

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

[Mandana Mehrbod]

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.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi,

Try the first 8 characters for root as Cheryl suggested.

Robert-Jan

[Mandana Mehrbod]

Unfortunately it didn,t help.

[RAC_1]

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

[Bruno Ganino]

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

[John Carr_2]

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.

[Mandana Mehrbod]

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.