My original message is at the end of this note.
The answer was kindly provided by Ian Mortimer:
> Check that you've got setuid permission on those files. Without that
> they won't work for anyone but root.
Other responses that could have been the problem were:
Brian Hill:
This is just a guess, but it sounds like you chmod 600 /etc/passwd.
{I checked, it was 644}
Spider Boardman:
Sounds like you've lost either the /etc/sia/matrix.conf file or
the /etc/sia/siainitgood file.
{Both there, the siainitgood has 700 permissions; is that correct?}
Thanks to all,
Jason
<--- original message --->
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 - 05:27:31 NZDT