[ale] Login Problem

[Bob's Bulk mail]

> Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 18:13:31 -0500 (EST)
> From: Christopher Hamilton <hamilton at mao.morehead-st.edu>
> To: Most Wonderful Linux Group <ale at cc.gatech.edu>
> Subject: [ale] Login Problem

> I just had the most bizarre problem. I just installed Linux on
> my laptop and made myself a user account (chrish). Last night
> I could log in fine and move about with no problems -- however
> since I recompiled my kernel, I can log in as "chrish" but it
> says "Can't find /adm/home/chrish!" and it chucks me back out
> to the login prompt.

> As root, I try "su - chrish" and not only do I get a similar
> message, but I also get a "Permission Denied" message when it
> tries to exec my shell (/bin/tcsh).

Since "su" does not use login, I would suspect your shell, which seems
to be /bin/tcsh.  You might try changing your login shell (temporarily)
to /bin/bash and see if the problems go away.  If so, I'd suspect your
.cshrc & .login files and the permissions on /bin/tcsh itself.

If this doesn't solve it, I'd do "ls -la /adm/home" to see if something
strange is going on.  Also do "strings x|more or less" ;^), where x is
/bin/tcsh, /bin/login, and /bin/su to see which of them has a string of
"/adm/home", which will indicate the bad guy.

If you're still at a loss, get the source for these culprits, compile and
install (with alternate names in case they don't work) and start debugging.

Maybe someone else will say "Oh, that's the X problem, do Y.".

> Help? Thanks!
> chrish
>  ...............................................................
>  Christopher L. Hamilton       System Security Analyst
>  hamilton at mao.morehead-st.edu  Morehead Astophysical Observatory