On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 01:46:01PM -0500, Vikki Roemer wrote: > Hi! > Lately (for the last few weeks) I've been unable to mount the floppy > drive or su using one of my accounts. Mostly it's just annoying > because the account that's having problems is the one I use for > programming and for playing with possibly dangerous stuff-- my default > account is fine. But, when I do need to get at the floppy when I'm > programming, I have to log in as root on another terminal and transfer > files between the floppy and the home dir that way, and then go back > over to the terminal where I'm logged in to program; needless to say, > this is a Bad Thing. > > But I've looked through everything I can find and I can't find any > explanation for it. Both accounts are members of the 'floppy' group, > so according to what I've read there's no reason why I should be > refused access to the floppy drive. The error message I get when I > try to mount a floppy is: > mount: Must be superuser to mount. > > As for not being allowed to su to root, that's odd, too. What > happens is, I'll type in su, it'll prompt me for a password, I'll type > it in (correctly), and then it'll tell me "su: Authentication failure > Sorry." I can't figure out what the problem is there, either. > > Up until a few weeks ago, I didn't have any trouble mounting the > floppy or su'ing. Does anybody have any idea what the problem might > be? > > TIA.
This su problem happened to me, with the additional weirdness that if I just hit return when su prompted for a password - ie. gave it NO password - it would su me to root! Some helpful person on the list whose name I have unfortunately forgotten suggested that I check for corrupted /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, and that was it sorted. Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
