Re: can't mount or su
On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 01:46:01PM -0500, Vikki Roemer wrote:
> 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?
>
> TIA.
This su problem happened to me, with the additional weirdness that if
I just hit return when su prompted for a password - ie. gave it NO
password - it would su me to root!
Some helpful person on the list whose name I have unfortunately
forgotten suggested that I check for corrupted /etc/passwd and
/etc/shadow, and that was it sorted.
Pigeon
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