YAST does not accept root password

Hello,

Just installed SUSE11.3 and everything was ok until did initial online update. Following update, YAST will not accept root password when launched from KDE (have not tried other window managers). Dialog box is presented to enter root password. It reports back “invalid root password”. But I can run yast or yast2 from command line (as root) and that seems to come up, but not all items seem to work.

I can log in as root with no problem. Only YAST will not accept my password. Any ideas what could be the problem here? I’m running KDE on a Dell D610. Ran SUSE 11.0 for several years, absolutely no problem.

Thanks for any help.

We had a thread recently about a likewise problem → root password problem with Yast

It might contain a solution for you as well.

Does ‘kdesu’ work for other applications?

ej2pi wrote:

> Just installed SUSE11.3 and everything was ok until did initial online
> update.

since another user had exactly the same problem a few days ago (as
correctly noted by the other helper in this thread) i guess there
‘must’ be a bug in that update that needs to be reported here:
http://en.opensuse.org/Submitting_Bug_Reports

if you can please report which updates mucked it up…perhaps you and
the other who had the same symptoms could PM each other and compare
updates, installed software, etc and provide the developers a focused
place to look…

note: bug reporting begins with searching to see if the bug exists
already…(maybe it does, i have not looked)…if it does, and you can
add info to it (like which updates immediately preceded the symptoms),
please do so…

in this way you become a contributor to openSUSE, Linux, and
free/open software… :wink:


DenverD
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]

Thank you for the quick response. Turns out the problem seems to be that yast2 wants the default root login shell to be /bin/bash, not /bin/tcsh as I had it set (yes I know, I’m in the stone age, sorry). And so the password checking fails for some reason. It also results in certain yast configuration items to fail. Those items probably require bash as well. Other items “may” not.

When I change default root login shell back to bash all seems perfectly normal, as far as I can see. This behavior is new from 11.0 distribution.

ej2pi wrote:
> This behavior is new from 11.0 distribution.

in the other thread i asked you to report the bug (and i repeat it
here in case you don’t see the other), see:
http://en.opensuse.org/Submitting_Bug_Reports


DenverD
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]

After further experimentation, I found the problem is not due to default /bin/tcsh login shell, per se, but rather an issue in the associated .cshrc file. From .cshrc I source another file, called .alias. If I give that filename as a relative path, like this:

source .alias

then Yast (when launched from KDE) will not accept my root password. If I give a full path, like this:

source /root/.alias

or

source ~/.alias

then everything works fine. Now I cannot say that this behavior changed from 11.0 to 11.3, because the full path is specified on my machine running 11.0. I suppose I could try the relative path over there to see what happens. But I do know that the KDE Yast launcher was NOT sensitive to this prior to my online updates (from fresh 11.3 install). There is no way I’ll ever know which update caused the change, because there were hundreds of updates between 11.3 iso release and 10/24/1020.

A bug? probably not. And I don’t know where stderr goes when you launch one of these KDE lauchers, so it is difficult for me to find out the detailed error. It likely cant find the .alias file in the pwd whatever that is when Yast is launched from KDE. This type of thing could bite somebody running tcsh, bash, or any shell, if something goes wrong in the associated shell startup script.

I’m reposting this to the earlier thread as well, for informational purpose. That previous user had similar issue caused by a .bashrc error.

Sorry, meant to say 10/24/2010

On 2010-10-25 17:55, DenverD wrote:
> ej2pi wrote:
>> This behavior is new from 11.0 distribution.
>
> in the other thread i asked you to report the bug (and i repeat it
> here in case you don’t see the other), see:
> http://en.opensuse.org/Submitting_Bug_Reports

Probably scripts with the shebang set to /bin/sh and then using bash only syntax.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)