I can not su to root on my Sun Solaris 9 (SPARC) box, even with the correct password

From: Kevin Shen (KevinWinstonShen_at_netscape.net)
Date: 12/30/03

  • Next message: Kevin Shen: "I can not su to root on my Sun Solaris 9 (SPARC) box, even with the correct password" 
    Date: 29 Dec 2003 16:52:33 -0800

    Could someone help me out with my problem / issue? I would greatly
    appreciate and be thankful for any help and / or guidance that anyone
    can give me.

    I recently upgraded the OS on my Sun box from Solaris 8 to Solaris 9
    (SPARC platform). When I login as a regular user and then switch my
    login user id to root (using the su - ) command, I am not able to log
    in as root. I used the correct root password but still am not able to
    successfully su to root. I get the following error, when I attempt to
    su to root, in the listing below:

     Mon Dec 29 18:28:26 #whoami
    kshen
     Mon Dec 29 18:28:28 #su -
    Password:
    su: incorrect password

    I have the following configured and running on my Sun box. I am
    running an Ultra 1 140, with 512 MB of RAM, an externally attached
    SCSI hard drive array, and a 100 Base-T S-Bus Network card. Yeah, I
    must admit that this box may be slow for Solaris 9, but it works well
    for what it is primarily being used for- as an NFS / SAMBA (SMB) file
    server. I am using NIS / YP for my authentication and this Sun box is
    NOT neither running as an NIS master nor as an NIS slave server. The
    NIS server that this Sun box "ypbind's to" is a Red Hat Linux 9 box.
    I am using the standard PAM-based authentication on this Sun box and
    am not using Kerebros of any one of those new authentication schemes /
    protocols.

    In addition the user id in my listing, "kshen" is an account that is
    being propagated through the NIS / YP Linux server. Also, this user,
    kshen is in the following groups, as shown in the listing below:

     Mon Dec 29 18:28:36 #group Mon Dec 29 18:28:36 #groups kshen
    kshen : wheel xgrp company

    I have also modified my /etc/groups file and added a group, wheel and
    reassigned the group staff id # from 10 to 11, my /etc/groups file, as
    shown below:

    root::0:root
    other::1:
    bin::2:root,bin,daemon
    sys::3:adm,bin,root,sys
    adm::4:root,adm,daemon
    uucp::5:root,uucp
    mail::6:root
    tty::7:root,adm
    lp::8:root,lp,adm
    nuucp::9:root,nuucp
    wheel::10:root:+
    staff::11:+
    daemon::12:root,daemon
    sysadmin::14:
    smmsp::25:smmsp
    nobody::60001:
    noaccess::60002:
    nogroup::65534:
    +:::

    I had the same type of setup mentioned above, except that it was
    running on Solaris 8 and had no problems to su - to root from a
    regular authenticated user. Does anyone know what may be wrong with
    my setup? Is there something that I may have overlooked or is there
    something that I am missing, in order to get things to work properly?
    Again, I would greatly appreciate any help and / or guidance regarding
    this issue. Thanks.

  • Next message: Kevin Shen: "I can not su to root on my Sun Solaris 9 (SPARC) box, even with the correct password"

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