I had a similar problem 1 year ago. I was running RH 6.2. I was unable to
log on as ANYONE. The only way I could get in was booting single user mode
and automatically getting in as root. I changed the passwords as you did,
and nothing worked. What I found out was interesting (even though I never
solved the problem). When I went into single user mode, I noticed that all
of the administrative log files in /var/log were pointing to /dev/null. I
sent out messages to people who are pretty good with security. Their
thoughts were that someone hacked into the system, disabled all logins, and
were using the machine to spam or launch DOS attacks. Since all of my logs
were pointing to /dev/null (/var/log/maillog, /var/log/lastlog, ...), I was
unable to confirm this. Everything else on the system worked fine except the
fact I could not log in (the web servers were operational). I ended up doing
three things:
1) Upgrading to RH 7.1
2) Removing the RH source
3) Removing any compilers installed
I have not had any problems since. However, I never verified if the problem
was RH or hacker related. Your problem description sounds EXACTLY the same
as mine. Check your administrative log files.
-Jim Wartnick
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Duo Maxwell [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 2:41 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: pam.d related?
>
> ok, this is very weird question.
>
> i cant login via root, or any other user name on the
> system.
> im thinkin its something like /etc/nologin
> but that allows root to login.
> so i try rebooting in to single user mode,
> i use passwd to change the password of root
> then i boot in to init 3 and still i cant login as
> root
> it exits out just as like a /etc/nologin was there,..
> what would cause , or how can i make root not be able
> to login form consols,.?
> is it related to pam?
>
> im sorry but i no longer have access to this machine,
> so i cant tell u if there is /etc/nologin file or not,
> or if there is anything un usuall in /etc/pam.d/ but
> if i wanted to ristrict access of root login form
> consol, how would i do that?
> i know about normal users, thats from /etc/nologin,
> but i didnt know you could lock out root.
> please explain.
>
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