Users not getting a command prompt

[jmckinzie]

The users can login just fine but users are not getting a command prompt.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The first thing that I would check is NFS especially if the users home directory are NFS mounted either explicitly or via the automounter.

Can you login as root on the console? What does bdf do?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I should add that you are running bdf for two reasons: To see if you have any filesystems that are full 2) To see if all the expected filesystems are available.

[jmckinzie]

I can login fine...

Users however cannot.

The home dirs are NFS mounts on a filer that is visible when i do a bdf.

bdf

nasfsa02:/vol/fcrr_v1/home91
1048576 887160 161416 85% /home91
nasfsa02:/vol/fcrr_v1/home03
8388608 7880504 508104 94% /home03

These are our home dirs.

Any ideas?

[jmckinzie]

any explicit ways to check NFS mounts and performance to these filesystems that contain the home directories?

[Bill Hassell]

Are users actually logging in but the login process is hanging and never gets to a shell prompt? If so, you are likely running into a long time difficulty with NFS and file locking. These users likely have the variable HISTFILE defined as HISTFILE=$HOME/.sh_history and therein lies the problem. The shell must handle the history file in a special way to allow multiple shells (from the same user) to properly update and recall. The only solution is to change the global /etc/profile to set the HISTFILE on a local disk, something like this:

export HISTFILE=/var/tmp/histfiles/$(logname).sh_history

There are other problems with NFS home directories such as Glance.

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Yep, Bill's already been exactly where I was heading although my first cut is generally to change a regular user to use a local home directory and once I get that working proceed until I break it but your symptoms are pretty classic .histfile problems. Testing as root is always a good first step but then testing as a local regular user is usually my second test so that I know if I am fighting permissions or something else.

[jmckinzie]

THanks to all....points provided.