Re: root login on console not allowed -- why and how?
On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 08:12:53 -0500, Kent West wrote:
> Andreas Ntaflos wrote:
>
> >A colleague of mine set up a Debian 3.1 (or was ist 3.0?) box a couple
> >of months ago and has had the following problem since then:
> >
> >When booting the machine everything seems fine and it gets to the login
> >prompt eventually. There every non-system, non-root user can login and
> >(if authorized) do an `su'. All is well. A login as the superuser,
> >however, fails. No matter what password is entered, the system refuses to
> >let us in as root. The root-password can be changed without problem
> >when `su'-ed to root so the problem is not that it's mistyped at the
> >prompt or anything.
> >
> >A (I think) related problem is that there's only one virtual console
> >available (the first). Pressing Alt-F2, ..., F12 doesn't work, no other
> >ttys are there. That disturbs me.
> >
> That _is_ odd; something must've gone wrong during the install.
>
> I'd start by looking in "/etc/inittab", to see if it looks normal.
>
> I'd also install chkrootkit; your colleague may have been compromised.
Thanks for the replies! I am certain that the machine is not compromised
since the only time it's used only on the company's internal network
(and there's nobody there who could or would compromise a Unix machine).
My colleague was basically a Linux newbie when he installed the machine
(and still is to a degree) so it's reasonable to think that he did
something wrong during installation.
Checking GDM settings is a good idea, thanks. I'll re-check
/etc/inittab, maybe I overlooked something. sshd_config is fine, root
access via ssh works (but will be disabled eventually of course).
Is there anything else I could look into?
Thanks
Andreas
--
Andreas "daff" Ntaflos
daff AT dword DOT org
Vienna, Austria
Reply to: