

Re: su doesn't work; root cannot log in! Arrgggg

Alan Davis wrote:

My machine has been up for a few days, and now I cannot take it down, since only the sessions that are now open to root will work. I am running "sid" the unstable, and recently did a major upgrade.
In an xterm, the following is received:

  bash-2.05$ su
  su: Module is unknown
bash-2.05$ What the heck does that mean?
Also, back on a virtual terminal/console.  Root cannot log in.

I reinstalled the login package with no effect.

Alan Davis

Sid had a broken PAM module for a while; it's now been fixed and uploaded to the mirrors, so a normal apt update/upgrade should fix it.

To get into root, you'll have to reboot your computer (probably Ctrl-Aflt-F1 to get to the first virtual terminal, followed by a Ctrl-Alt-Delete to force a reboot should do it) and boot into single user mode. You can do this by typing "linux s" at the "boot:" prompt (assuming your normal kernel image is named "linux").


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