Hi,
After some suggestions from the list which did not work, I found
out the solution myself incidently.
What I did was to "chfn" all users. I've just used the default
values for everything and now the users can SU to root just as I want
it. Apparently something was wrong in the /etc/passwd file.
/etc/passwd now has:
tom:xxxxxxxxxxx:1033:26:Tom,,,:/home/tom:/bin/ksh
tomlocal:xxxxxx:1033:26:Tom Local Acct,,,:/home/tomlocal:/bin/ksh
tomsys:xxxxxxxx:1033:26:Tom System Acct,,,:/home/tomsys:/bin/ksh
rather than
tom:xxxxxxxxxxx:1033:26:tom:/home/tom:/bin/ksh
tomlocal:xxxxxx:1033:26:Tom Local Acct:/home/tomlocal:/bin/ksh
tomsys:xxxxxxxx:1033:26:Tom System Acct:/home/tomsys:/bin/ksh
which I was before.
This is sort of stange but it works now.
Thanks to: Marcel Bernards <bernards_at_ecn.nl>
           Peter R David <david_at_lama.stanford.edu>
for their suggestions.
This is my original posting:
On Fri, 22 Nov 1996, Thomas Leitner wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On an DEC 3000/600 running OSF1 V3.0, 358.78 I need to give certain
> users the ability to su to root. The usual way for that is just to put
> them in the system group in /etc/group.
> 
> Now: As soon as I do this, these particular users cannot login anymore
> and I cannot even su to them:
> 
>     # head -1 /etc/group
>     system:*:0:tom
>     # su tom
>     No shell
>     # su - tom
>     No directory
> 
> When I take him out of the system group, everything works as normal:
> 
>     # head -1 /etc/group
>     system:*:0:
>     # su tom
>     $ ^D
>     # su - tom
>     {testbox}/home/tom>
> 
> I need to add, that there are several users with the same UID and GID
> in /etc/passwd:
> 
>     tom:xxxxxxxxxxx:1033:26:tom:/home/tom:/bin/ksh
>     tomlocal:xxxxxx:1033:26:Tom Local Acct:/home/tomlocal:/bin/ksh
>     tomsys:xxxxxxxx:1033:26:Tom System Acct:/home/tomsys:/bin/ksh
> 
> and that the box is running in base (BSD) security but I don't think
> that this makes any difference.
> 
> Any ideas anyone?
Tom
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T o m   L e i t n e r                       Dept. of Communications
                                            Graz University of Technology, 
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Received on Tue Nov 26 1996 - 19:19:44 NZDT