Cannot log in as root directly, but su works

Tito farmatito at tiscali.it
Mon Mar 12 07:40:51 PDT 2007


On Monday 12 March 2007 12:19:39 Martetschlaeger Stefan wrote:
> Hi all, 
> 
> I'm currently working on an embedded arm system. I try to get it working with a read-only rootfs. I use an initrd to set things up, and do then switch_root into the read-only mounted rootfs which works quit fine but I cannot login as root directly on the login prompt. It says "Login incorrect" right after I enter "root".  I can, however, log in as any other user and then use su to gain root access. 
> The weird thing is that it worked fine until 2 days ago as I replaced the /dev directory by a symlink to the mounted ramdisk I use for volatile data (/dev, /home, /tmp are also symlinks to the appropriate directories on this disk). I double checked that all device files are correctly set up on the ramdisk to rule out every obvious reason for any problem here. I can't see why that change should have broken something here. 
> passwd, group and shadow are in place and contain entries for root. I get no messages in /var/log/messages after a login attempt as root. Also, the console I try to log in as root is listed in /etc/securetty .
> 
> I'm running linux-2.6.19.2, busybox-1.4.1 and Bash 3.2.0 as my default shell
> 
> Are there any more things to look at ?
> 
> Regards, 
> Steve

Hi,
check if you have all needed libnss* libraries.

Ciao,
Tito


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