[comp.unix.aux] Questions about su and high-density discs

davidh@syma.sussex.ac.uk (David J Hobley) (03/01/90)

I have been using A/UX for a few weeks now. I was wondering about a few
points:

1) I have changed my shell to /usr/local/bin/tcsh. After I did this, I was
unable to 'su' any more - it just came back with "Sorry!". In SunOS, there is
a file /etc/shells which details trusted shells, is there any such thing in
A/UX. It seems somewhat bizarre that when it is the superuser that has to
change the shell, if it isn't the csh/sh/ksh that you can now no longer use
su. Have I missed something?

2) Is there any way to get A/UX to format high-density discs? If hfx could
also be patched to recognise high density discs, it would also be very useful.

Many thanks,
david

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   davidh@uk.ac.sussex.cogs
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rmtodd@servalan.uucp (Richard Todd) (03/02/90)

In article <2301@syma.sussex.ac.uk> davidh@syma.susx.ac.uk (David J Hobley) writes:
>1) I have changed my shell to /usr/local/bin/tcsh. After I did this, I was
>unable to 'su' any more - it just came back with "Sorry!". In SunOS, there is
>a file /etc/shells which details trusted shells, is there any such thing in
>A/UX. It seems somewhat bizarre that when it is the superuser that has to
>change the shell, if it isn't the csh/sh/ksh that you can now no longer use
>su. Have I missed something?
  Yep.  It's not a security feature; it's a result of a bug in the original 
A/UX tcsh port from Ohio State, specifically a bug somewhere in the job
control code.  Paul Traina has a version of tcsh which allows su just fine.
It was at one time available for anonymous ftp from anise.acc.com; I haven't
checked there lately to see if it's still there.  

>2) Is there any way to get A/UX to format high-density discs? If hfx could
>also be patched to recognise high density discs, it would also be very useful.
  Not that I'm aware of; if there is, it sure isn't documented.
--
Richard Todd	rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us
	rmtodd@servalan.uucp
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numb@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Newman) (03/02/90)

The problem with su  just returning, saying sorry, is due to various problems
with the setcompat syscall in A/UX.

Basically when su runs it can't open /dev/tty, this is due to the shell not
running in the proper setcompat modes.

We run tcsh here, and now have no problems, but it was hell for a while.
The setcompat stuff is both confusing and DANGEROUS. Do not ever use the
COMPAT_EXEC option unless you are absolutely sure that you want the rest of
the world to work under you compat modes.

If you require further info please mail me directly.
-- 
Matthew Simon Philip Newman
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