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Re: can't mount or su



Am Mon, 2002-12-16 um 19.46 schrieb Vikki Roemer:
> Hi!
> Lately (for the last few weeks) I've been unable to mount the floppy
> drive or su using one of my accounts.  Mostly it's just annoying
> because the account that's having problems is the one I use for
> programming and for playing with possibly dangerous stuff-- my default
> account is fine.  But, when I do need to get at the floppy when I'm
> programming, I have to log in as root on another terminal and transfer
> files between the floppy and the home dir that way, and then go back
> over to the terminal where I'm logged in to program; needless to say,
> this is a Bad Thing.
> 
> But I've looked through everything I can find and I can't find any
> explanation for it.  Both accounts are members of the 'floppy' group,
> so according to what I've read there's no reason why I should be
> refused access to the floppy drive.  The error message I get when I
> try to mount a floppy is:
> mount: Must be superuser to mount.
> 
> As for not being allowed to su to root, that's odd, too.  What
> happens is, I'll type in su, it'll prompt me for a password, I'll type
> it in (correctly), and then it'll tell me "su: Authentication failure
> Sorry."  I can't figure out what the problem is there, either.
> 
> Up until a few weeks ago, I didn't have any trouble mounting the
> floppy or su'ing.  Does anybody have any idea what the problem might
> be?
> 

You may want to try a strace of su:

$ strace su

Most of the times you will find your answer with strace.

-- 

Matthias Hentges
[www.hentges.net] -> PGP + HTML are welcome
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My OS: Debian Woody: Geek by Nature, Linux by Choice




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