Just to add the note that the same or at least very similar symptoms appear with nss-mysql (the debian package libnss-mysql) and no NIS. With 2.3.2 I can login via gdm, but not on the console. I can't su but I can ssh into the machine. If I remove mysql from the group line in nsswitch.conf then root logins on the console work again (root is a local ie. /etc/passwd account). Andreas