Simon,

You've probably removed world execute permissions on directories, which is
a bad idea. Every user needs execute permissions on each directory in
a path to be able to traverse those directories.

Try (as root) 
# ls -ld /home
and if there's no x in the last permission field
# chmod o+x /home.

You'll probably need to do this on other directories /boot, /bin, /usr/bin
and so on.

Next time don't be quite so cavalier trying to harden permissions :) There's
usually no problem with programs being world executable; you can have
problems with "setuid" programs which is a separate matter. 

You've probably got other problems on top of this but on reading your
message I think the main problem is directory permissions not being there.

> I then discovered that when I try and login as my normal user I get the
> message:
>       cannot cd to "/home/user"

probably because directory permissions on /home are too tight.

> I then found that as root whenever I try to su to a user I get the error:
>       #su <user>
>       No shell.

probably because directory permssions on /bin or /usr/bin are too tight.

> So I suspect that the gdm and lprng errors are just because those users
> cannot "login".

Good luck,
Stuart.

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