[gentoo-user] su doesn't work for me.

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Gentoo.

When, as a normal user, I type "su", followed, when prompted, by the
root password, I get the following error message:

su: Permission denied

. The return code is 1. I can't glean anything useful from the man
page.

Would somebody please tell me what I'm missing.

Many thanks!

--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

[Alexey Mishustin]

4/10/2011, "Alan Mackenzie" <a...@muc.de> вы писали:

>Hi, Gentoo.
>
>When, as a normal user, I type "su", followed, when prompted, by the
>root password, I get the following error message:
>
> su: Permission denied
>
>. The return code is 1. I can't glean anything useful from the man
>page.
>
>Would somebody please tell me what I'm missing.
>
>Many thanks!

Is your normal user a member of the 'wheel' group?

--
Regards,
Alex

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 15:19 on Sunday 10 April 2011, Yann Ormanns
did opine thusly:

> Subject: [gentoo-user] su doesn't work for me.
> From: Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de>
> To: Yann Ormanns <yann-o...@web.de>
> Date: 2011-04-10 15:17 (+0000)

>
> > Hi, Gentoo.
> >
> > When, as a normal user, I type "su", followed, when prompted, by the
> >
> > root password, I get the following error message:
> > su: Permission denied
> >
> > . The return code is 1. I can't glean anything useful from the man
> > page.
> >
> > Would somebody please tell me what I'm missing.
> >
> > Many thanks!
>

> Are you a member of the "wheel"-group? You can check that by executing
> "id yourname". If not, execute "usermod -aG wheel yourname".

Only root can run that and he can't su to root :-)

Log in directly as root on a text console and run it there.
If you can't log in as root, try su to root from any user in the wheel group.
If that still doesn't work, get out the LiveCD

--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[Yann Ormanns]

Subject: [gentoo-user] su doesn't work for me.
From: Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de>
To: Yann Ormanns <yann-o...@web.de>
Date: 2011-04-10 15:17 (+0000)

> Hi, Gentoo.

>
> When, as a normal user, I type "su", followed, when prompted, by the
> root password, I get the following error message:
>
> su: Permission denied
>
> . The return code is 1. I can't glean anything useful from the man
> page.
>
> Would somebody please tell me what I'm missing.
>
> Many thanks!
>

Are you a member of the "wheel"-group? You can check that by executing

"id yourname". If not, execute "usermod -aG wheel yourname".

Best regards,
Yann

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Yann,

> > Hi, Gentoo.

> > su: Permission denied

> > Many thanks!

That was it! I've now got su-ability from that normal user.

Funny, though, on my (very) old Debian system I don't seem to have a
wheel.

Thanks.

> Best regards,
> Yann

[Dale]

> That was it! I've now got su-ability from that normal user.
>
> Funny, though, on my (very) old Debian system I don't seem to have a
> wheel.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>> Best regards,
>> Yann
>>
>

I think that is a Gentoo thing. It does add some security if you don't
want a user, like maybe some little kid, getting root access for any
reason.

Dale

:-) :-)

[Yohan Pereira]

On Sunday 10 Apr 2011 07:58:21 PM Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> Funny, though, on my (very) old Debian system I don't seem to have a

> wheel.

oh thats because the wheel was invented after the previous debian release :D.

--

- Yohan Pereira

"A man can do as he will, but not will as he will" - Schopenhauer

[Albert Hopkins]

> Funny, though, on my (very) old Debian system I don't seem to have a
> wheel.

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/su-invocation.html

Bottom section.

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 16:28 on Sunday 10 April 2011, Dale did opine
thusly:

No, it's pretty standard across Unix.

The BSD's for example have had it since forever - members of the wheel group
being allowed to sudo anything only came along much later.

Leaving it *out* is a Linux-distro thing, probably from the usual usage case
for Linux for many years - a server on the web that actually only had one user
even though it was capable of being fully multi-user. The concept of wheel for
su is pretty redundant in that case.

[Dale]

I learned something today. I only used Mandrake before Gentoo and never
saw anyone else mention it, except Gentoo users. Sort of thought it was
a Gentoo thing.

Thanks for the info.

Dale

:-) :-)

[Neil Bothwick]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2011 19:52:39 +0530, Yohan Pereira wrote:

> > Funny, though, on my (very) old Debian system I don't seem to have a
> > wheel.
>
> oh thats because the wheel was invented after the previous debian
> release :D.

ROTFL

--
Neil Bothwick

Time is an illusion but never so much as when you're using a modem.

[Mark Shields]

Wheel has nothing to do with su; it has everything to do with sudo, but only if /etc/sudoers is edited to allow the Wheel group sudo access.  Su is for changing to a different user, or running a command as another user; doing either requires the password of that user; sudo, on the other hand, only requires your password, if you're in the wheel group and the wheel group is given full sudo access, and the sudo access for wheel requires your password.  

Some examples, assuming your user (the one you're logged in as) is in wheel and requires a password for sudo access (see: visudo):

sudo su  <--- escalates you to root user with your own password.  This is running "su" with "sudo".

su user <--- switches to "user" with their password required to be entered

sudo su user < -- switch to "user" with your password required to be entered

sudo <command> <-- runs command as root

sudo -u user <command> <--- runs command as "user"

sudo su - user <--- escalates you to "user" and cd's to their home directory

Please read the man pages for sudo and su for more info.

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 00:32 on Monday 11 April 2011, Mark Shields
did opine thusly:

Mark,

You know better than that. Re-read my post, I said that *Unix*, most
especially the BSDs, have had a concept of wheel for, well, since almost when
Unix started. sudo came much later and for sudo, wheel is naturally a very
useful pre-existing thing to use.

If Linux distros, maintainers or the GNU folk chose to not implement wheel
membership as a prerequisite for su, then that's fine. They can do what they
want with their stuff but it doesn't change the fact that other operating
systems can, and do, do it differently.

I have read man su and man sudo. Many times. I see that the ones I have are
very Linux-centric.

Google "wheel su" for more info, keeping in mind that Linux != Unix

[Mark Shields]

That response wasn't really meant for you, your reply just happened to be the one I clicked reply on.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Monday 11 April 2011 01:46:44 Mark Shields wrote:

> That response wasn't really meant for you, your reply just happened to be
> the one I clicked reply on.

What? Just happened? Don't you think before you post?

--
Rgds
Peter