Hello, just an idea.... Try to use su like this: "su -" Maybe the harden_suse script has taken the suid bit of su, passwd and on? Christian Richard Ibbotson wrote:
Hi
Got a problem with an SuSE 8.1server which is runing in console mode. No X-windows. After running harden_suse I find that I cannot change the password and log back in again.
I followed Roman Drahtmueller's advice which appeared on the SuSE security list back on the 9th of October last year....
Please "touch /etc/rc.config" to work around this. This is a bug - depending on the selection of packages on your system it can happen that said file does not exist any more. It slipped through last time.
This worked for me and I was able to run ./harden_suse. However, on re-booting I now find that I can't log back in again. The password is rejected and if I become a user and then try to do 'su root' I find that once again the root password is rejected.
Looking in /var/log/messages I see that my login messages which tell me that someone has tried to login reveal this ....
"cannot open login.defs [Permission denied]"
Anyone suggest a way out of this ? Perhaps I need to remove harden_suse and start again ?