su - is not working

[Toscanini Montaño]

Hi all,

I have a Trusted Mode system with HP-UX 11.00 and when I try to switch root with the command su - the system show this message:

unknown id:root and return the prompt

What is happening in my system??

thanks, Toscanini

[IT_2007]

your password file might have got corrupted, you may need to fix it.

[DCE]

run the command
grep root /etc/passwd
and see if root has been accidently deleted.

Do you have sudo installed? If so, you will at least be able to switch to root and correct the problem

[Toscanini Montaño]

I can do a telnet or ssh session without problem.

Just when I run the su command the connection is rejected.

Toscanini

[Kevin Wright]

does su - root work?

[IT_2007]

so when you telnet or ssh, are you able to login as root?

what it shows the path and size for su?

$ ll /usr/bin/su
-r-sr-xr-x 1 root bin 28672 Oct 4 2002 /usr/bin/su

[Toscanini Montaño]

I don´t have sudo installed on my system but the telnet service is open to connect with root user.

The su - root is not working and this is the permision for su path.

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 24576 Aug 6 1998 /usr/bin/su

I can see only a excution permission for su command.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

This is wrong, su can't possibly work without the setuid bit being set:

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 24576 Aug 6 1998 /usr/bin/su

The mode should be:
-r-sr-xr-x

So chmod 4555 /usr/bin/su and make sure that the ownership remains root:bin.

[DCE]

try a chmod u +s /usr/bin/su

to change the sticky bit

[A. Clay Stephenson]

It's not the sticky bit (octal 1000); it's the setuid bit (octal 4000). chmod 4755 avoids the symbolic "improvements".