Problem: can't log in/su with any non-root user
I'm not sure if this has been posted before (I've looked but can't find anything.) I recently reinstalled debian because the only user that my system could use was root. When I tried to su to any user except root I would get error messages: su: cannot run /bin/bash: Permission denied When I tried to login as another user: Unable to cd to /home/porp Now this creates many problems except the obvious one (I have to use root always): no daemons or programs can run as another user--exim (mail), the cron.daily find (nobody), or any others. Before I continue, I'll list the permissions of certain files: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 364336 Jul 25 02:45 /bin/bash -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 9512 Jun 2 09:59 /bin/su drwxr-sr-x 2 porp porp 1024 Jul 24 14:49 porp drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Jul 25 02:39 bin drwxrwsr-x 4 root staff1024 Jul 24 22:14 home I've been on irc.debian.org and have asked many people to help me discover the problem but no one has been of much help. Nevertheless, I decided to reinstall. I figured doing that would fix all problems. And it did. I could login as any one, exim would work, and I was happy. But as soon as I upgraded to potato (I like many of the packages in unstable), every thing broke again. Now I'm sure this can't be a widespread problem because I would have found solutions. But I cannot figure out what the problem is. It can't be the permissions on bash because if I change the user's shell in /etc/passwd, I get the same error, just a different shell is listed. It has to be with some potato packages, either one or a combination of some are conflicting or broken. But then again I do not know because many people use potato. I just know that I'm not smart enough to figure it out, and my system is broken. I really do hope you guys can help.
Re: Problem: can't log in/su with any non-root user
What are your permissions for /bin/login? -- Andrew I've check the permissions on many files. I may've overlooked one, but here is /bin/login. -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root40432 May 31 15:01 /bin/login
Re: Problem: can't log in/su with any non-root user
I ran potato for a long time without any problems, but I built a new computer recently so I reinstalled everything. Then the problem arised. When I couldn't fix it, I just reinstalled again--from scratch, a nice, clean hard drive. Everything was fine with my 2.1 install, but when I upgraded to potato, it broke. I did apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade. I had one problem with the samba package and apt died. I couldn't run apt again (something about can't handle the media swap) but I ran dselect and went to install/configure packages (I'm not sure on exactly what it's called, but its one of the options on the dselect main screen) and dselect continued where apt broke. After that, apt would work normally but when I checked to see if the problem showed up again, I found that it was. I can't figure out what in the world it could be. Exactly how did you reinstall? Did you recreate everything, or are you trying to reuse parts of a previous installation (e.g. /home)? Many people, including me, have upgraded from Slink to Potato without such a problem. You're not trying to use passwd and group files or /home directories left over from a previous distribution are you? -- Eric G. Miller Powered by the POTATO (http://www.debian.org)!
Re: Problem: can't log in/su with any non-root user
What're the permissions on /? (ls -ld /) THANK YOU! It never even occured to me to check the permissions on /. But when I did, I found that only root, the owner, had permission to execute. Well I fixed that! And now everything seems to be working. Gosh, am I glad. Again, thanks guys. You're really helpful!
