I've developed a weird problem this evening. Login seems to be failing,
when logging on, except when logging on as root.
Logging into a terminal results in login appearing to restart. I am
entering the information correctly - If i don't, i get the normal `login
incorrect' message, however login just refuses to login. Running login
from an xterm results in an error message, and login quits. Here's what
i get when i login correctly(from an allready xterm)
[nathan@celia nathan]$ login nathan
Password:
Authentication service cannot retrieve authentication info.
If i enter the password incorrectly i get a more normal result:
[nathan@celia nathan]$ login nathan
Password:
Login incorrect
login:
I've never been able to login to an allready logged in terminal, however
i've allways gotten the standard `login incorrect' msg, however this is
affecting login terminals as i allready stated. I got some help from a
Linux irc channel(that i idle in), however no-one could really give me
anything useful. I tried starting a differant shell, and then running
login(in an xterm again), and i got the same result. The only thing i
could think of that 'd changed was ~/.bash_profile. This was how i
discovered login was broken, since i wanted to test if the MAIL variable
was being set when i logged in on proper terminals. I've used default
bash configs, and tried with no (user specific) configs in place, so i'm
fairly confident that it isn't anything to do with bash. I also tried
creating another user, however i got the exact same result. I tried
playing with PAm a bit(messing with the login auth file, not really
understanding what i was commenting out etc), however i didn't manage to
acheive anything. I tried using `rpm -F pam-xxx-xx.rpm', which i think
upates the package, reguardless of whether the same version(which it
is), however that had no effect. I tried using redhat's `up2date' to
upate PAM, but nothing was there, and tried (and failedish) to look for
newer versions of PAM on the web. I also tried a google search with my
error message, and saw some results, but none of them contained any
answeres.
I really haven't a clue what's caused this. I have changed my system
around a bit lately, the most recent thing being switching to BlackBox
as my WM(and i'm not regretting it :)).
I also ought to add that `su' works perfectly. I've not tried logging in
through xdm yet. I was preparing to reinstall, or more likely try
another Distro anyway, so if there's no solution, it's not as bad as it
might be. Plus,i can probebrly manage logging in as root, and then using
su for a short while.
I've been lurking here since January btw, so sorry for not using the
list till now.
-Nathan
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