Problems with su

Nik Simpson x333 nik at st_nik.UUCP
Thu Feb 15 05:20:45 AEST 1990


In article <19379 at grebyn.com>, rhodes at grebyn.com (Ned Rhodes) writes:
> 
> 	I had a disk go bad on a V.3 system.  I formatted up another
> drive and did a re-installation of unix.  I then overlaid my backup tape
> to take care of the differences.  The system comes up fine with one
> exception.  I can only login as root.  Whenever I try another username,
> it gives me the initial login banner and then says "no shell".  If I log
> in as root and then do an "su newusername", I get the error message "su:
> No shell".  

	Often the problem is that the passwd file is missing or has an
invalid field in it.  Any passwd entries after the invalid field will not
be usable.  I would suggest you run the /etc/pwck command which will tell
you about any bad fields in the /etc/passwd file.

	Hope this helps,  most problems we have like this are from this cause.

-- 
|--------------------------------------------------|
|  Nik Simpson	UUCP :  uunet!ingr!swndn!st_nik!nik|
|  Senior Systems Engineer.     Intergraph UK Ltd. |
|--------------------------------------------------|



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