[CentOS] Can only login as root

Thu May 3 13:25:02 UTC 2012
Tait Clarridge <tait at taiter.com>


On Thu, 2012-05-03 at 13:47 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> I have a strange problem on a CentOS-5.8 machine.
> I can only login as root.
> If I try to login with one of the user's names,
> it hangs for a long time.
> I thought it hung forever, but I just found that
> I do login after "su tim" after 5 minutes.
> 
> It seems that the problem lies in repeated messages in /var/log/messages
> ---------------------------
> May  3 12:14:13 helen su: nss_ldap: failed to bind to LDAP server 
> ldap://www.gayleard.com/: Can't contact LDAP server
> May  3 12:14:13 helen su: nss_ldap: reconnecting to LDAP server 
>   (sleeping 64 seconds)...
> ---------------------------
> 
> The openldap server is not running, and I don't see why
> this authentication is being sought.
> There is nothing in /etc/pam.d/su or /etc/pam.d/login
> or /etc/ssh/sshd_config to suggest that ldap needs to be invoked,
> unless it is a part of system-auth .
> 

Have you also checked /etc/nsswitch.conf?