Invalid ID during su

[mooi-kuan]

Hi,

When I try to su from a normal user, I have the following error.

$ su root
Password:
setgroups: Not owner
su: Invalid ID

Can anyone tell me what is happening. Remove out the /etc/logingroup link, the setgroups NOt owner gone but Invalid ID still there.

[Ken Scharpell]

Looks like an error in your passwd file. What does the root entry in your passwd file look like ? (you can remove the password bit for security reasons).

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

You might try checking your password and group files with 'pwck' and 'grpck' respectively. See the man (1M) pages for each.

...JRF...

[mooi-kuan]

Hi Ken or James,
Below is the output of pwck command:

nobody:*:-2:-2::/:
Invalid GID

pwrchute::101:20:Powerchute Pseudo User:/home/pwrchute:/sbin/false
Login directory not found

developer:XNc3FBgJz5QuI:8410:8400:HP84000 developer:/home/developer:/bin/ksh
Logname too long/short

student10::8430:8400:84000 student,,,:/home/student10:/usr/bin/ksh
Logname too long/short
Login directory not found

mklim:1p1FqbXrIUEV6:103:20:,,,:/home/mklim:/usr/bin/sh
Login directory not found

--------------------------------------------
Below is the output of pwck on a machine that DONOT have su problem:

nobody:*:-2:-2::/:
Invalid GID

pwrchute::101:20:Powerchute Pseudo User:/home/pwrchute:/sbin/false
Login directory not found

developer:cSw4Isw54K1Ps:8410:8400:HP84000 developer:/home/developer:/bin/ksh
Logname too long/short

sam_exec:xxx:0:1::/home/sam_exec:/usr/bin/sh
1 Bad character(s) in logname

I am also attaching the /etc/passwd file from the problematic machine.

Please help, thank you !

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

Sorry, I forgot to mention that 'pwck' complains about lots of those things -- like underscores in user names, etc.

You never said to whom or from whom you are doing the 'su'. Make sure that your default groups as represented in the /etc/passwd file are represented in the /etc/group. You are using a group ID = 8400 for some users. Is that defined in the group file?

...JRF...

[mooi-kuan]

Hi James,
Thank you for your reply.

I am enclosing the /etc/group file...

I did su from users operator to root.

Infact, I have tried, none of the users on that system can succesfully su to root.

[John Palmer · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Another thing that could be causing your problem is the permissions of the su command /usr/bin/su.

ll /usr/bin/su should give you:-
-r-sr-xr-x 1 root bin ...

To return them to normal you need to
chmod 4555 /usr/bin/su
chown root:bin /usr/bin/su

Hope this helps,
John

[Matt Loveland]

We had the same problem when the system was "Trusted" and somehow got corrupted. I believe you will need to login to the console and use sam to "untrust" the machine then retrust it to rebuild the /tcb directory structure.

Hope that solves it.
Thanks,
Matt