Su Isnt Asking For Password Of Root Anymore

HI,

Since this morning i can't su to root anymore!
When i enter the command su, in stead of asking me for a password, it stays busy for a few seconds, and then returns with "su: incorrect password"

i can login as a normal user, or use su to change to another normal user.

what is going on?????

can you paste here the output of the command:

ls -l /bin/su

can you paste here the output of the command:

ls -l /bin/su
[/b]

Of course:

-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 31540 2006-11-25 19:04 /bin/su

I had already checked it and to me it looks ok.

btw im using Suse 10.2, text only

are you logged in as a root?
same issue typing
su
and
su [username]
?
(where [username] is the usename of a valid user of the system)
Try with many users or creating new users... in case logins are for some reasons disabled for some of the existing users in that system


EDIT: are you logging through ssh? did you change any config file or install some services lately?

are you logged in as a root?
same issue typing
su
and
su [username]
?
[/b]

no, su [username] works like a charm, no problems their at all.
Im logged in a a normal user through ssh doing all this, can't test if i can login as root on the console because im not at the location.

I tried login in as root through ssh (theirs only a fixed nr of IP-addresses that can ssh to my server) but then (after entering login as: root) im getting the error: No supported authentication methods available

ok by default in /etc/ssh/sshd_config there is a commented line
#PermitRootLogin yes
its commented: so you will not be able to login as root via ssh that way
thats why you get an error if you use su to switch to root but not to other users

The only way to allow that is going to the machine directly, and change that line of /etc/ssh/sshd_config uncommenting it. Keep in mind that its a big security vulnerability. BIG...

ok by default in /etc/ssh/sshd_config there is a commented line
#PermitRootLogin yes
its commented: so you will not be able to login as root via ssh that way
thats why you get an error if you use su to switch to root but not to other users

The only way to allow that is going to the machine directly, and change that line of /etc/ssh/sshd_config uncommenting it. Keep in mind that its a big security vulnerability. BIG...
[/b]

mmmm ... maybe you are right, but i thought everything worked fine until this morning, and i havent been fiddling wiht the ssh settings lately. Anyway, i can't check this now ... have to have root permission to view the config file ;-)

Guess i'll have to wait till i'm home and can login from the console

thanks for your time G0NZ0

forgot to say: if you decide to modify that config file, then you also need to restart ssh deamon:
kill the existing one (use ps -aux|grep sshd to get the process ID, then use kill -9 [pid]), then restart /usr/sbin/sshd

forgot to say: if you decide to modify that config file, then you also need to restart ssh deamon:
kill the existing one (use ps -aux|grep sshd to get the process ID, then use kill -9 [pid]), then restart /usr/sbin/sshd
[/b]

isnt a simple

 /etc/init.d/sshd restart

enough?

maybe, however if you have sshd enable at boot in the runlevels thare are 2 or 3 different ssh applications that are running. Not sure, maybe the restart is enough. I'd go for the safe way and kill and restart them all in case you are then far from your computer