Root Login

[JohnMuir]

I cannot login directly as root on my system but can su to root. Can someone advise me what is the cause of this please.

[Cheryl Griffin]

Maybe someone changed root's .profile or /etc/profile forcing su to login.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

cat /etc/securetty
console

if you have "console" in the /etc/securetty file root can only login direct on the console.

Hope this helps,
Robert-Jan

[JohnMuir]

No the /etc/profile nor the .profile has not been changed to force this, one of the first things I thought of. The system is running 11.00 and is not set up as a trusted system, if any of that helps. I have also compared it to other systems I have and cannot find any obvious differences.

[JohnMuir]

Nope, not a trusted system so no /etc/security directory at all. Good tries though. Still looking.

[Geoff Wild]

Yes - look for console in /etc/securetty

Note - this is a good thing.

Rgds...Geoff

[Victor BERRIDGE]

The only reason I can see is as already metionned: the presence of a /etc/securetty file...

All the best
Victor

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

James,

/etc/securetty (not security) has nothing to do with trusted systems.

[Geoff Wild]

Okay - how are you logging in?

cde, telnet or ssh?

Rgds...Geoff

[JohnMuir]

Don't have a /etc/securetty directory either. Logging in using a telnet session.

[Geoff Wild]

Do you have access to the console? can you login as root there?

Rgds...Geoff

[Geoff Wild]

The only other thing I can think of - is maybe root has been disabled - check it out with SAM...

Rgds...Geoff

[Fabio Ettore]

Hi,

I too as the first thing would see the presence of /etc/securetty.
Since it is not the reason of the problem then it is very strange.

Additional info:
- does the problem happen suddenly? (patch management recently)
- what is the exact error message that you obtain when login as root?
- any restrictions in /var/adm/inetd.sec on telnet service?

Best regards,
Ettore

[RAC_1 · Accepted solution]

Is the root password more than 8 chars long? Does it have special chars (such as @) in it?

Use only the first 8 chars of the password.

Also when you try to login directly, do you get any message in syslog? Does it give any message in syslog.log? And what message?

Anil

[JohnMuir]

It was because of the special characters in roots password. Thanks.

[RAC_1]

Even if there is a @ character in password, you an try escaping it.

If your password is 12@abcde,

Key in as follows.

12\@abcde

Anil

[bhavin asokan]

hi,
pls note that 'securetty' is a file in the /etc directory

regds,

[R. Sri Ram Kishore_1]

Hi,

Check out the following thread (EXACTLY same problem):
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=456516

You might also want to take a look at these threads:
a) http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=227754

b) http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=254809

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Sri Ram