[mdlug] su Password problem

[Drew]

At 03:38 PM 6/4/09, Aaron Kulkis wrote:

>My guess is that su returned "wrong password" because it
>was the wrong password, as compared to the hash of the
>root password stored in /etc/shadow, which, by definition,
>represents the right password.
>
>Now, if you can log into root using this password, then
>su is screwed up.  But my guess is that you can't login
>to root using the password you tried, either.

In this case you guess wrong. I can in fact simply log in as root, using
the same password that su is rejecting. I just did so again to be sure.
Also as I've mentioned Yast and Administrator Mode  in Personal Preferences
both accept the same password.

Which means su is screwed up.

Question is, what could have screwed/be screwing it up?


>Get a rescue disk, mount the root partition, edit
>/mnt/etc/shadow, remove the password hash (replace
>:34398b9839ghbavhabihbrwhatever: with ::), save the
>file, boot off the main system, login to root (the
>password should be simply the return key), and then
>IMMEDIATELY run the command   passwd

I might try this eventually. But I still want to know why su is being
different.

----

- Drew.