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From: weimer@ssd.kodak.com (Gary Weimer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Problems with su/csh on Ultrix 4.0/DECstation 5000
Keywords: ultrix csh getwd cron shell
Message-ID: <1990Nov27.141002.5396@ssd.kodak.com>
Date: 27 Nov 90 14:10:02 GMT
References: <1990Nov27.005226.18032@sarah.albany.edu>
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Organization: Eastman Kodak
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In article <1990Nov27.005226.18032@sarah.albany.edu> boehme@unvax.union.edu (Eric M. Boehm) writes:
>
>I have run into a problem out of the blue. Suddenly, our DECstation 500
>won't let me use su to switch to another user. I get the following error
>message:
>
>getwd: can't open .. -- can't start new shell
>
>This happened suddenly. Also, after rebooting the machine, su may work
>once or twice and then give the error message. This also screws up
>commands I have in crontab -- they do not get run. Lately, even commands
>running as root in crontab weren't being run. I even went so far as to
>redo the Ultrix installation. That did not help. 

Try changing to a different directory. The error message is telling you that
you do not have permission (read? execute?--I forget what you need) for the
previous directory (..). For some reason, su needs to access every directory
in your current path to be able to access the /etc/passwd file (added
security?). Changing directories, or adding permission to directories in
your path should fix the problem.

Gary Weimer