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