Re: Password trouble?

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:41:23 -0400
"Peter H. Fröhlich" <phf%cs.jhu.edu@localhost> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> This might be a horrible FAQ (although some quick googling didn't  
> turn up anything), but since it just happened to me and I don't want  
> it to happen again...
> 
> I just built NetBSD-current successfully for the first time (yay!),
> I followed the instructions from
> 
>    http://www.netbsd.org/docs/current/
> 
> and everything seemed great, but after the final reboot I can't get  
> back into my box remotely, all passwords seem to be gone for some  
> reason. :-/
> 
> Did I miss something obvious? If so, what? I hope I can fix this
> from the console when I get to it later?
> 
Something to check -- did you build with -U but install without it?
That will manifest itself as programs that should be setuid but aren't,
which in turn can cause all sorts of access problems.  Here's an easy
check: is /usr/bin/su setuid or not?  If not, that's your problem.


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb