Strange behavior of su

[Michael Cooper]

In article <319 at ihdev.UUCP> pdg at ihdev.UUCP (55224-P. D. Guthrie) writes:
>In article <314 at aphasia.UUCP> gww at aphasia.UUCP (George Williams) writes:
>>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?
>>
>>			    George Williams
>>			    decvax!frog!aphasia!gww
>
>I had this happen almost all the time on a 4.1 system. However it only
>happened when I su'd to a non-root user. Curiouser and curiouser....
>I never did try to track it down, but I would be interested to know
>what it was. Anyone?
>
>				Paul Guthrie
>				ihnp4!ihdev!pdg

If you are in a directory that is inaccessable to the user you are su'ing
into, then the shell exits.


-- 
					Michael Cooper

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|University of Southern California - University Computing Services	     |
|============================================================================|
|	Usenet: ...!{uscvax, sdcrdcf, engvax, scgvaxd, smeagol,	             |
|		    cit-vax, brand, dworkin, tyger, omnilax}!oberon!mcooper  |
|	Bitnet: mcooper at jaxom 						     |
|	  ARPA:	mcooper at usc-oberon.arpa	OR mcooper%usc-oberon at usc-ecld.arpa  |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+