su, chfn, chsh, lp stopped working

From: Jason Birch <jbirch_at_psp.pair.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 19:08:04 -0800

Please help,

Since earlier this afternoon, access to certain programs in /usr/bin has
been removed from user logins, from the console or otherwise (they still
work for root).

These include such things as su, chfn and chsh. The commands appear to be
accepted, but fail somewhere. For instance, the sialog records the
following when I try to su:

SIA:ERROR Wed Oct 29 18:44:41 1997
Failure on authentication for su from jason to root

The su command doesn't even prompt me for a password. It just executes,
and returns to the user prompt. chfn and chsh exhibit similar behaviour.

The lp command also started choking at the same time (again, for users, it
works under root) with the following error:

lpr: cannot chown /usr/spool/plotter/tfA002pss.com


Finally, attempting to login as root from the console or a tty (with ptys
temporarily added to the securetty file) results in the DECTerm crashing
with an error that I can't read in time.

I'm not sure what I or one of the other admins may have done that would
have caused this. Could someone tell me what the permissions, ownership
and group
for /usr /usr/bin and the utils should be? Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Jason
Received on Thu Oct 30 1997 - 04:21:50 NZDT

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