Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 SP2 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION Installation Manual page 948

• The user does not have permission to log in to that particular host in the authentica-
tion system.
• The machine has changed hostnames, for whatever reason, and the user does not
have permission to log in to that host.
• The machine cannot reach the authentication server or directory server that contains
that user's information.
• There might be problems with the X Window System authenticating this particular
user, especially if the user's home has been used with another Linux distribution
prior to installing the current one.
To locate the cause of the login failures with network authentication, proceed as follows:
1 Check whether the user remembered his password correctly before you start de-
2 Determine the directory server the machine relies on for authentication and make
3 Determine that the user's username and password work on other machines to
4 See if another user can log in to the misbehaving machine. If another user can
5 Try to log in from a console (using Ctrl + Alt + F1 ). If this is successful, the blame
6 If the user's home directory has been used with another Linux distribution, remove
930 Installation and Administration
bugging the whole authentication mechanism.
sure that it is up and running and properly communicating with the other machines.
make sure that his authentication data exists and is properly distributed.
log in without difficulty or if root can log in, log in and examine the /var/
log/messages file. Locate the time stamps that correspond to the login at-
tempts and determine if PAM has produced any error messages.
cannot be put on PAM or the directory server on which the user's home is hosted,
because it is possible to authenticate this user on this machine. Try to locate any
problems with the X Window System or the desktop (GNOME or KDE). For
more information, refer to Section 51.4.3, "Login Successful but GNOME
Desktop Fails " (page 931) and Section 51.4.4, "Login Successful but KDE
Desktop Fails" (page 932).
the Xauthority file in the user's home. Use a console login via Ctrl + Alt +
F1 and run rm .Xauthority as this user. This should eliminate X authentica-
tion problems for this user. Try a graphical login again.