can no longer su into root

[Sky]

alright, this is a major asspain and i can't seem to fix it. my love for google is dissapating.

Anywho, yesterday i was logged in as my everyday user. i had su'd in before to tweak some apache configs, then exited. however, now, whenever i try to, i get authentication failure. i know the password is correct because i can log in as the root itself, and my user is still listed as a member of the wheel group.

any help would be greatly appreciated, and paid back with hugs.
let me know if there is anything else you need to know.

[smindinvern]

errm... first of all... what did you do before this happened, is there anything that you suspect may have caused it, e.g. emerging something.... also, can you create and log into a dummy user and su from that, as a member of wheel of course

[Sky]

Well:

I haven't installed anything since Wednesday morning (gallery, Image Magick, netpbm). However, I had spent since Wed night trying to figure out why my thumbnails couldn't be created (that's a nother post, altogether) and all that time I had root access.

So when I left for work on Thursday, the only thing open was mozilla (tabs to the max). I came back home, opened konsole, tried to su in, and nothing.

I created a test user, I tested it on my machine, and also via ssh (and had a trusted friend do the same), but we couldn't su in. All of my config files appear to be in order.

I have since set up sudo, so at least I can still update packages and such.

[sdousley]

sounds kinda like permissions on the wheel group if they can get messed up at all. Not too sure where they're stored etc, but that may be a solution.

[Sky]

thank you, i'll see what i can find

[loft306]

it could also be a 'pam' problem