Apparently, though unproven, at 15:19 on Sunday 10 April 2011, Yann Ormanns did opine thusly:
> Subject: [gentoo-user] su doesn't work for me. > From: Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de> > To: Yann Ormanns <yann-orma...@web.de> > Date: 2011-04-10 15:17 (+0000) > > > Hi, Gentoo. > > > > When, as a normal user, I type "su", followed, when prompted, by the > > > > root password, I get the following error message: > > su: Permission denied > > > > . The return code is 1. I can't glean anything useful from the man > > page. > > > > Would somebody please tell me what I'm missing. > > > > Many thanks! > > Are you a member of the "wheel"-group? You can check that by executing > "id yourname". If not, execute "usermod -aG wheel yourname". Only root can run that and he can't su to root :-) Log in directly as root on a text console and run it there. If you can't log in as root, try su to root from any user in the wheel group. If that still doesn't work, get out the LiveCD -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
