[colug-432] su broken on fedora f14

[Richard Troth]

SELinux?
You may have one or more files with a borken context.  If that is so,
you can test the theory by turning off enforcement.  If it works when
SELinux is not enforcing, then you probably just need to restore the
SELinux context ... maybe of 'su', maybe of /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow
... or maybe just relabel the whole shootin match like some people do
at every reboot.  I don't remember the command(s) to restore context
because I turn off SELinux from the get-go.

-- R;   <><





On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 14:13, Vince Herried <vince at planetvince.info> wrote:
> I installed F14 on my laptop and liked it so Friday I installed
> it on my desktop. Normal stuff no problems.
>
> I used visu and setup sudo so my normal account could do everything.
>
> ---- Here comes the mystery ------
>
>        At some point 'su -' stopped working  with a complaint that i was
>        using the wrong password for root.
>
>        system commands that prompt for a root password work fine
>        with the same password that 'su -' fails
>
>        sudo works fine.
>
>        I single user booted and re-set the root password with
>        "passwd"
>
>        rebooted ... same problem
>
>        tried "sudo passwd root" to set root passwd again.
>        no joy
>
>        again Fedora programs that prompt for root passwords work fine.
>
>        I used the Fedora/gnome gui to look at user 'root'
>        and to set the root password.  it displays a gui with old password
>        as a number of '*'  fewer than the number of characters in root's password.
>        Huh?
>        Used the Gui to set the password... as I type it in... shows '*' for each
>        character...
>        display it again... shows fewer "*" than it contains.
>
>        symptom persists.  Starting to think the command 'su - ' is dorked.
>
>
> iirc  'su' is contained in rpm 'coreutils'
> -------
> f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
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