[CentOS] Login problem on CentOS 4.4 GDM

Mark Hull-Richter mhullrich at gmail.com
Thu May 24 02:19:37 UTC 2007


On 5/23/07, Jim Perrin <jperrin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Shouldn't matter, but you should really *never* log into the GUI as
> root for a server. I smack my junior admins around verbally when I see
> this sort of thing (I should probably really stop watching reruns of
> House and Scrubs...)

Technically it's not a server, but I almost never log in as root
anyway, just as a matter of habit.  This time there was no
alternative.

> If you installed enough to get the gui, you
> should have also gotten firstboot, which would have prompted you to
> create a user. Does this user work? Did you log in with this user
> before you logged in with root? (If not, can you try that?)

No and yes, in that order.

> What options are you setting for these users(shell, home directory,
> enabled/disabled status etc)?

Pretty much just the defaults, except that I put all the users in the
"users" group (instead of having a unique one for each).  /bin/bash,
/home/<username>, enabled...

> This error should tell you that it dropped an error file. Have you
> looked at the contents of this file?

I thought so too, and I looked for one, but the only error the files
in /var/log/gdm are showing are:

(WW) ATI(0): Failed to set up write-combining range (0xfc000000, 0x8000000)
AUDIT: Wen May 23 18:59:25 2007: 5901 X: client 5 rejected from local host

Does that mean something (in English)?

> The gui tools can sometimes hide useful errors. Can you try
> adding/removing users from the cli with useradd/userdel?

These work, but the users still can't log in.

> How are you looking at  /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow? If you're opening
> them with an editor, you could be inadvertently changing the
> permissions.

-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1575 May 23 19:08 /etc/passwd
-r---------  1 root root   995 May 23 19:09 /etc/shadow

> This tells you that the md5sum has changed, and that the modify time
> has changed. Unless you were changing some values there, this
> shouldn't be the case. I don't use the gui user applet you're refering
> to, but I can't imagine that it would modify this file. At least not
> for any sane reason.

My thoughts also.

> I'd say try again with CLI tools to rule out any gui foolishness, and
> try logging in with the user you create at firstboot rather than
> logging in with root.

Tried that one, too.  No go.  I'm not sure now if I logged in as root
first or as mhr, though I can't fathom why that would make this kind
of difference.  If needed, tomorrow I can re-install one more time and
do the first login as the non-root user and see what happens.  I'm
wondering if the update to 4.5 has anything to do with this, since
that was one of the first things I did, and all this happened after
that.  Seems strange that I haven't heard of this before, though, if
that were the case.

Thanks!

-- 
Mark Hull-Richter
DATAllegro (www.datallegro.com)
85 Enterprise, Second Floor, Aliso Viejo, CA  92656
949-680-3082 - Office     949-680-3001 - fax



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