My system (debian testing) has suddenly stopped letting ordinary users log
on. Root can still function normally, but any other user receives the above
message whenever they try to log on. I have done some investigation into
the problem, and can rule out the following causes:
bash corruption: I have reinstalled bash, libc6 and libncurses5. Plus, the
same problem occurs with /bin/csh.
/etc/passwd and /etc/group look fine.
Permissions on root directories: all have as a minimum, 755. /tmp/
and /var/tmp have 777.
Permissions on /home directories: all are owned by the respective user, and
have 755 permissions.
Disk space: plenty of space on all volumes.
Permissions on libraries used by /bin/bash: I did a 'ldd /bin/bash':
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0xb7f43000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7f3f000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7e09000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f9c000)
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Feb 18 10:35 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 ->
libdl-2.3.5.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9592 Feb 6 23:39 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl-2.3.5.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Mar 19 17:46 /lib/libncurses.so.5 ->
libncurses.so.5.5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 268396 Oct 14 22:21 /lib/libncurses.so.5.5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Feb 18 10:35 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 ->
libc-2.3.5.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1262704 Feb 6
23:39 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.3.5.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 19 17:44 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 -> ld-2.3.5.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 88168 Feb 6 23:38 /lib/ld-2.3.5.so
Other libraries in /lib: not sure what their permissions should be.
The output of 'strace su david -c /bin/bash' is attached. Perhaps somebody
who understands it can comment.
Any ideas for fixing this would be extremely welcome.
--
David Jarvie.
Attachment:
strace
Description: Binary data