[arch-general] user management error

[Paul Gideon Dann]

On Tuesday 18 Mar 2014 10:28:05 message wrote:
> No, the system does not start as root.
> 
> After many reboots, am unable to sign-in directly as normal user 'a'.
> Have to sign in as 'root' (command 'su' not recognised), then change to
> 'a' using 'su a'. Access to /home directory 'a' (/home/a) is successful.

What do you mean by "command 'su' not recognised"? Is this a message displayed 
when you try to log in as "a"? Clearly 'su' does work, as you say you can use it 
after logging in as root.

>From your root account, can you do "passwd a" and set a new password for the "a" 
account to see if that helps?

If that's no good, can you show us the relevant line in /etc/passwd, so we can 
check it looks OK? (The password isn't stored in there, as has been explained 
already.)

Paul