Strange behavior of su

[Guy Middleton]

In article <664 at bu-cs.UUCP> root at bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) writes:
>>From: gww at aphasia.UUCP (George Williams)
>
>>We are running bsd4.2 on a vax 750.
>>
>>Every now and then after I have been logged in for a while I will try to
>>su, have su ask the password, and then it sits for a bit and exits.  It
>>does not generate any error messages, the exit status is 0.  After this
>>has happened it will keep happening until I log out, I have always been
>>able to su immediately after logging in.
>>
>>Anyone else had this? Anyone know why?
>
>YES, I thought *I* was crazy. If anyone has the fix please post, meanwhile
>I'll take a look myself. I wondered why no one else ever had mentioned this.
>
>	-Barry Shein, Boston University

Well, if you're using csh, then that may be your problem.  If csh can't stat
the parent of the directory it starts up in, it dies quietly.  Or at least
it used to; we have a different version here.
-- 
	Guy Middleton, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ont.
	..{allegra,clyde,decvax,utcsrgv}!watmath!thunder!gamiddleton
	..ihnp4!mmm!thunder!gamiddleton