From: pinch@cs.washington.edu (Ricardo Pincheira) Subject: permission problems with non-root users Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 07:56:49 GMT
Fellow linuxers,
I'm another of the many people who have been having problems with
accounts for users other than root. I just can't figure
it out from info in postings and the FAQ. Perhaps you can help -- the
feeling of power that comes from being "root" all the time fades
after a while :-). Seems like all I have to do is change permissions
of some file but I just can't figure it out.
This is with the brand new 99p6 release which I've pretty much been
able to install successfully (eg, X /twm is running, on my
little AST laptop :-))))) ). I haven't really used linux before,
except briefly with series a-b of 99p2 and then I heard of 99p6 so
started afresh.
The problems I have relate to permissions. Here's what happens.
If I log in as non-root (I'll describe how I gave myself an account
later) I get, if I use bash:
As I log in, I get:
shell-init: permission denied.
pwd: permission denied.
: permision denied
After that things pretty much work (eg, I can edit and
write out a file from vi) , except that I get a whole
bunch of permission denied messages for every command
I issue.
And if I use tcsh as my login shell (with chsh from root) and login
as non-root:
Last login: Sat Mar 6 10:31:54 on tty2
You have mail.
tcsh: Permission denied
tcsh: Trying to start from "/local/users/pinch"
shell-init: Permission denied
(then I get the prompt)
After that things work, w/o even silly "permission denied"
messages. But if I try to run a shellscript with tcsh as
the shell, I get (the shellscript is called pinchrm)
tcsh: Permission denied
tcsh: Trying to start from "/local/users/pinch"
pinchrm: No such file or directory.
Things work fine if I su to root.
Where oh where did I mess up? It looks like all I have to do is
reset the permissin of some file or other that is getting accessed
from the shell, but which??
I have tried finding the answer at the "unix system administration"
book by (oh, I forgot who!), to no avail.
In case it helps, here's the entries in my /etc/shadow:
daemon:*:8365:0:99999:7:::
bin:*:8365:0:99999:7:::
adm:*:8365:0:99999:7:::
pinch:SvQR.EZMawfts:8462:0:90:0:::0
and in /etc/passwd
root::0:0::/root:/usr/bin/tcsh
daemon:x:1:1::/etc:
bin:x:2:2::/bin:
adm:x:4:4::/:
uucp::5:5::/usr/uucp:
sync::255:0:::/bin/sync
anonymous:*:403:1::/home/ftp:/bin/sh
ftp:*:404:1::/home/ftp:/bin/sh
pinch:*:405:6:Ricardo Pincheira,Sieg 429,543-5129,367-9369:/local/users/pinch:/usr/bin/tcsh
99p6:
there was some postings about getting rid of some of the 0's in /etc/shadow
but I tried all sorts of changes w/o success.
To set this up I used
useradd -A DEFAULT -g 6 -s /usr/bin/tcsh -d/local/users/pinch -f -1 -e 9999999
-m pinch
passwd pinch
(gave myself a passwd)
chown --r pinch /local/users/pinch
chgrp --recursive 6 /local/users/pinch
chfn pinch (to change finger information)
I also tried the technique outlined in the FAQ to add accounts to no
avail (after userdel'ing the account. I tried this many times). I also
tried adding to /etc/rc.local file the line "rm -f /etc/nologin" as
suggested by the FAQ. To no avail.
Incidentally, in reference to earlier postings along a similar line,
I should say that non-root users have no problem changing their passwd.
Many thanks for any help.
Ricardo
pinch@cs.washington.edu
-- Ricardo pinch@cs.washington.edu -- Just doodoo it