[7157] in Athena Bugs
rt 7.2R: xlogin, login, login library? This one's weird...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Feb 21 12:50:10 1991
From: qjb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 91 12:49:59 -0500
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
System name: m11-112-6
Type and version: RTPC-ROMPC 7.2R
Display type: apa16
This is a very bizzare situation. I am not sure exactly how it
could have happened. THe workstation m11-112-4 was running
xlogin in what appeared to single user mode; i.e., there were no
processes running on the workstation and init had not yet run
/etc/rc. I don't know how the workstation got into this state;
perhaps someone booted in single user mode and started dm by
hand.
What were you trying to do?
Log in to fix the workstation
What's wrong:
I typed "root" as the password at xlogin and couldn't
get in because the workstation had not activated (given
that it had no network, etc.). I tried to log in on the
console as root.
** I GOT can't send to kdc ERRORS !!! **
The workstation should *NOT* have been trying to send
anything to the kdc given that I was logging in as root.
Although I can't test this now beacuse someone is using
the workstation (which I rebooted), it seems that you
can't log in as root on the console if the network is
not running! If this is the case, it is a very bad thing.
What should have happened:
I should have been able to log in as root on the console
because I knew root's password and root has a local account.
Just for humor value, here's what happened.
I tried to log in as root on the console and couldn't do so
because of the network not being present, so I hit CTRL-D at
the login: prompt. At that point, two things started to happen
simultaneously: init started to run /etc/rc, and xlogin started
up again! I actually saw the output of /etc/rc in the xlogin
console window! Once the workstation finished booting, it
started up a *second* xlogin and a *second X server* on top of
the first. The two X servers both thought they were in total
control of the screen, so there were lots overlapping images,
etc. I shutdown window system from the "top" xlogin from the
other options menu, and only had one xlogin, though it was not
refreshing properly. I shut that one down from the menu as
well, and got a console login prompt. Then the first xlogin
tried to start, but failed; it only put up an X server. At this
point, there was nothing to do but hard boot the machine.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get in to look at the machine and
figure out the problem. After rebooting, the machine came up
fine. Next time I get the chance, I am going to find an idle
public workstation and see whether I can duplicate this
situation by bringing the machine up in single-user mode,
running fsck and starting dm.
Strange.
