Blank password works for root

[Bevan C. Bennett]

Bill Beeman wrote:
> If anyone else has any ideas, I'm open: to recap, a null password works
> for root on this machine, whether from the console, a ssh session, or an
> X session.  The same when attempting to su...either the root password or
> a null password works.
> 
> This is not the case with a normal user password.  I've run
> chkrootkit-0.43, and it comes up clean.
> 
> Ideas?

To reiterate my working theory, I think your root user actually has a 
null password, either in the system files or in a remote authentication 
store (like LDAP).

The complete 'auth' contents of your system-auth, plus the root entry 
from /etc/shadow (obfuscate is desired) would help our debugging efforts.