On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 08:12:53 -0500, Kent West wrote: > Andreas Ntaflos wrote: > > >A colleague of mine set up a Debian 3.1 (or was ist 3.0?) box a couple > >of months ago and has had the following problem since then: > > > >When booting the machine everything seems fine and it gets to the login > >prompt eventually. There every non-system, non-root user can login and > >(if authorized) do an `su'. All is well. A login as the superuser, > >however, fails. No matter what password is entered, the system refuses to > >let us in as root. The root-password can be changed without problem > >when `su'-ed to root so the problem is not that it's mistyped at the > >prompt or anything. > > > >A (I think) related problem is that there's only one virtual console > >available (the first). Pressing Alt-F2, ..., F12 doesn't work, no other > >ttys are there. That disturbs me. > > > That _is_ odd; something must've gone wrong during the install. > > I'd start by looking in "/etc/inittab", to see if it looks normal. > > I'd also install chkrootkit; your colleague may have been compromised.
Thanks for the replies! I am certain that the machine is not compromised since the only time it's used only on the company's internal network (and there's nobody there who could or would compromise a Unix machine). My colleague was basically a Linux newbie when he installed the machine (and still is to a degree) so it's reasonable to think that he did something wrong during installation. Checking GDM settings is a good idea, thanks. I'll re-check /etc/inittab, maybe I overlooked something. sshd_config is fine, root access via ssh works (but will be disabled eventually of course). Is there anything else I could look into? Thanks Andreas -- Andreas "daff" Ntaflos daff AT dword DOT org Vienna, Austria -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
