*BSD News Article 89385


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From: Arne Henrik Juul <arnej@imf.unit.no>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Please Help Me Use /usr/bin/su
Date: 13 Feb 1997 16:03:02 +0100
Organization: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
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tsmurphy@cs.uiuc.edu (TERENCE MURPHY) writes:

> I have just installed 2.2-GAMMA, my first BSD experience, and I like
> it, however I have one problem with /usr/bin/su.  I am in the group
> ``wheel'' like the manpage says, but I still have little luck.  I
> looked for this is the FAQ but found nothing.  Here is a transcript:
> 
> sonja:[p2]/[17:50:06]:~% groups
> wheel
> sonja:[p2]/[17:50:09]:~% su
> su: kerberos: not in root's ACL.
> su: you are not in the correct group to su root.
> 
> I believe only the second error message is important.

It looks like you are only a member in /etc/passwd, not in /etc/group.
The su code will not check which groups you actually have active like
`groups`, it will get the list of members of group 0 and check if you
are a member of that list.

See also PR 1882, which in addition to changing a bit of system policy
(when wheel group is empty), fixes the documentation to say that you
must be *listed* in group 0.

  -  Arne H. J.