su refuses to accept root password

[Stormblazer]

I've been trying to set it up so I won't have to run as root all the time (changing permissions/ownerships, setting up groups, etc.), but for no reason I can find, when logged in as a user, su won't accept the root password, which I know works, because I can log in as root without any problems. I've tried using to passwd to reset my password, but it still won't su. I can su from root to something else (which doesn't require a password), but the reverse won't work whether I put in the right password or not, no matter how many times I try. It does this under X, console, anything, even trying to run root access only GUI configs with the GUI'd password entry, it just won't work
I'm running Gentoo (~x86, stage2).

[lordnothing]

usermod -G users,wheel,cdrom,disk,games,foo,bar,baz,bleh <username>

you have to be in the wheel group. but, everytime you add another group with usermod -G, you have to type the entire list again. use the 'groups' command to see the current list of groups your user is in.

[valan]

Try using the command 'login' if you can't get su to work.

[Stormblazer]

I fixed it, but then xmms-itouch crashed xmms in a rather spectacular way, leaving me with a system that refuses to accept the root password for anything. I'm currently in the process of re-installing Gentoo.
At least now I have an excuse to add xinerama support and do a stage1 installation (i had stage2).

[valan]

Heh, the login command like I said likely won't work anyway. Try it and it will tell you why. Although I do remember it working on an old distro I got around here somewhere.