an authentication problem

[Paula J. Lindsay]

Thank you John and Steve, good advice.  The problem was when I did the 
updates, it changed my nsswitch.conf
file.  I'll have to start saving a copy of it when I first do the 
updates on a machine.  Many thanks to you for your
help.  I don't know what I would do without this group!
Paula

Steve Phillips wrote:
> Paula J. Lindsay wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>> I just set up a RHE 4.  I got it registered with RH and the updates 
>> going so I thought everything was fine.  Then the lab called
>> me back, they weren't able to log in.  I looked at the messages and I 
>> see the people who tried to log in, which is everyone in
>> this particular lab, and they are all getting the same error:
>>
>> Jan  4 10:32:45 leila sshd(pam_unix)[12276]: 2 more authentication 
>> failures; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=serendipity  
>> user=felitsky
>>
>> when myself or someone that is not in the lab logs in it is fine.  
>> Can anyone help me out.  I've checked off the firewall, exported
>> the users from their home directory, but it didn't fix the problem.  
>> Can any help me?  Has this happened to anyone out there
>> in RH world?  Many thanks in advance for any help.
>> Paula
>>
>
> You may want to increase the log verbosity of sshd in order to see why 
> it is failing.
>
> in /etc/ssh/sshd_config look for
>
> # obsoletes QuietMode and FascistLogging
> #SyslogFacility AUTH
> SyslogFacility AUTHPRIV
> #LogLevel INFO
>
> and uncomment the LogLevel and change it to DEBUG
>
> then you need to edit /etc/syslog.conf and locate the 'AUTHPRIV' 
> facility line and ensure it is something like
>
> # The authpriv file has restricted access.
> authpriv.*                                              /var/log/secure
>
> or authpriv.debug if it doesnt have a *
>
> Then restart syslogd and sshd (you'll only need to restart syslogd if 
> you have changed the config file obviously) and then get someone to 
> try logging in again, you should then see why the login is failing.
>
> HTH,
>
>

-- 
Paula J. Lindsay
IT Analyst III
Research Computing
10550 North Torrey Pines Road
La Jolla, CA  92037
858.784.9378 (office)
858.784.9301 (fax)
paula at scripps.edu