login problem on HP-UX 11.00 client

[JFS_1]

Hi all,

Situation : HP-UX 11.00 clients Workstation with a HP-UX Server. The $HOME is mounted on the client via NFS soft mount.

Problem :

I log in (with a user X) on the client. This is ok. I've got all my personal session (colors...). But any terminal windows don't give the prompt back ! The .profile is read, that's sure, but then it doesn't gi further.
If i log in as root and make a "su -", same problem : the terminal windows don't give the prompt...

Seems like he waits or search for something.

I really don't know what's happening !!

Any help is welcome.
Thanks

JFS

[Tomek Gryszkiewicz]

Hi,
Check if the shell in /etc/passwd for this user is correct and it is in /etc/shells

-Tomek

[JFS_1]

Hi,

the user is ok because i can login with this user on other HP-UX clients. We have NIS.

Something must be wrong on this workstation.
HP-people told me it could be a NFS problem, but i haven't found anything wrong so far...

It worked, then i had to boot the WS and now it doesn't work anymore.

JFS

[Umapathy S]

Hi,
Check the /etc/profile and .profiles. As this happens to all the users, the problem might be in /etc/profile. It may be waiting on a script that is called by /etc/profile.

HTH,
Umapathy

[JFS_1]

- /etc/profile is the same than on working Workstations.
- .profile of the $HOME is ok, because the users can log in on other WS.

It works with no user on this workstation.

I think it isn't a profile problem... before rebooting did the WS work without problems.

JFS

[Mark Grant]

I have an similar problem that I haven't bothered to do anything about on my machine at work. I find that commenting out the "PS1=" line in my .profile gets it to work. When it stops working again I take the comment out of the same line and it starts working again and so on.

I know this sounds weird but it works for me.

[JFS_1]

this PS1 thing doesn't work.

One more observation :
if i login on the WS with root and make a "su user", it works.
But "su - user" doesn't work...

[Umapathy S]

Hi again,
su - invokes the .profile of the user. There are 2 possibilities.

$HOME is not mounted at all and the nfs client is waiting indefinitely for the server to respond. So .profile cannot be executed.

$HOME is mounted but there is some problem in .profiles which is taking longer time to respond.

HTH,
Umapathy

[Mark Greene_1]

Add this

set -xv
PS4='${0##*/}:$LINENO: '
typeset -f $(typeset +f)

to your .profile script. This will display each line and line number of the script as it is executed. Then you may be able to see where the process is hanging.

mark

[Rahul Mehta_1]

I think problem is in NFS client on that machine.
Reboot workstation in single user mode and
test following

Reboot ws in single usermode.
login to the server .
manually start your rc scripts for level 2
now only start rc scripts for nfs and nis,
now try to mount your home directory manually.
If you can successed their everything should be fine..

else you are not able to reach to nfs server..

Thanks

Rahul Mehat

[JFS_1]

- .profile works. I've put a text at the end of the .profile and it appears in my terminal. But then, it doesn't go further and i don't get the prompt.

- the NFS-mounts seems to be ok. When i log in as root, i can reach the data in the mounted FS.

Thanks all fot these ideas !
JFS

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

What is the content of your prompt (PS1) ?
Is it static or dynamic, like does it contain a PWD variable or something like that?

In that case, try making it static, only containing your hostname:
PS1="`hostname` $"

Also, what you could do is try to login to the system the way it works and run the .profile in the current shell (. ./.profile, and remember the between the first two !!!) to make sure it is not .profile related.

Hope this gives some more light on the problem.

[JFS_1]

more infos :

- i've tried to modify the PS1. It doesn't help.

- i log in as root and open a terminal window. I go in the user xxx directory and make ". ./.profile" : it works !
I have my prompt, PS1 ans so on...

Then i'm making "su - xxx" (in the same Window): doesn't work...

It is the strangest problem i've ever seen !
JFS

[Joe Short]

Are you using automounter to mount the NFS directory? Sometimes automounter does not mount an NFS directory until you actually cd into it. This may be the problem, try putting the NFS mounts into /etc/fstab so they are mountedat boot time.

[JFS_1]

No automount is used.

JFS

[Mark Greene_1]

what's in root's .profile? If it's got the standard HP "tset" code, make the changes as noted below:

# Set up the terminal:
# comment this line if [ "$TERM" = "" ]
if [ "$TERM" = "" -o "$TERM" = "hp" ] # add this line
then
# comment this line too eval ` tset -s -Q -m ':?hp' `
eval ` tset -h -s -Q ` # add this line
else
eval ` tset -s -Q `
fi

watch the line wraps and remember this posts without benefit of indents.

mark

[Sanjay_6]

Hi JFS,

How about the directory permission for the user on the client. Is the user allowed to create files on the nfs soft mount $home once it is mounted on the client.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[JFS_1]

Solution : adding following lines in the .profile :

HISTFILE=/tmp/.sh_history
export HISTFILE

... this was missing...

Regards
JFS