[tlug] Re: [cabal] PAM problem?

[Matt Doughty <wyndigo@example.com>]

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 07:37:36PM +0700, Jonathan Byrne wrote:
> the recovery process was over, I found that a lot of files on the
> system were left with the UID that is apparently root on one of the
> rescue disks (don't know if this was pilot error or not; anything is
> possible at 4:00 AM).  I found them all using (naturally) find and
> set them back to root.root.

Wow, that is odd sounding.  I have never seen root be anything, but
uid 0.  Sounds like metadata got messed up something aweful.

> 
> System is RH 7.3.  My userid is a member of wheel, although that is
> not required for su on this system.
> 
> All related problems seem to now have vanished except two: 
> 
> 1) My normal userid cannot su to root or any other user (there normally
> aren't any login accounts, but I added a test user for troubleshooting
> this problem).  Logins from the command prompt or display manager
> work normally for both root and the test user.

This is exactly why I hate PAM. It maybe that PAM got foobared, and 
that is always a nightmare to fix.  I'm assuming you haven't got
any errors in the logs where pam is failing to open a file for example.
Perhaps a module that checks su ok is missing?? 

I have seen this before, but I honestly it a gentoo system that I
ended rebuilding as opposed to fixing it.  It might be worth 
removing the various checks to see if you can find which one is
blocking the su. Might also want to look at the differences between
/etc/pam.d/login and /etc/pam.d/su.

Course now that I typed all this, Chris is going to be dead on the
money, and the high bits are hosed on su.

--Matt