OK, getting away from the "login as root" silliness itself...
On Mar 19, 2008, at 4:08 PM, Roger Corbin wrote:
On 19-Mar-08, at 3:11 PM, Dan Shoop wrote:
On Mar 19, 2008, at 2:06 PM, Roger Corbin wrote:
We have one OS X Server that works perfectly for the most part,
except that if you try an log in as root it locks up.
Define "locks up". What locks up? What occurs.
The Windowing system of the finder is unresponsive if you try and
log in with the root user.
The rest of the system is still running as you can ssh into it as
admin etc.
Again, define /what/ is unresponsive. Do you have a mouse cursor? Does
it move? Can you selected windows? If you hover and give focus over
some windows does your beachball go away or turn to a watch? What? All
of these issues, while they all can be labeled as "unresponsive" are
different symptoms and indicate different problems.
It authenticates root at the console
and the desktop for the root user comes up. But once you are at
that point it's pretty much locked. It will let you move the
mouse pointer or highlight
an icon on the desktop or dock but that is about it.
So it's not locked at all. It's not even unresponsive. It just
isn't allowing...
You are correct. It's almost like it's trying to access something
that it can't get at.
Which is most likely the problem. Find out what resource is holding
you up. Serial consoles on an XServe or ssh sessions can be used to
launch lsof, fs_usgae, etc.
If only certain GUI apps are unresponsive, use Spin Control.
You can't launch any applications or pull down any menus etc. The
only way out of this is to either
send it a restart from ARD via another machine or to ssh into it
from another machine and restart it via command line.
So if you can ssh in as the root /account/ obviously *is* working.
You're having an issue with the the windowing system or Finder.
Exactly. Any ideas about how to fix the windowing system of the
finder for that one user ? Sudo does work and you can switch to root
via ssh so the root account is working. When you log in via the
console it does authenticate and give you a desktop. It's just
unresponsive
after that.
Have you blown away (or better yet, moved out of the way) the
Preferences directory?
The regular administrator account works fine. I don't see
anything really unusual in any log files.
It's a dual processor G5 Tower running 10.4.11 server (Universal)
We have about 10 other servers running the same configuration that
are working fine. This one has been perfect for about the last 7
months.
So rolling back to the backups from then produce what results?
The exact same problem occurred. But the backup is probably from
after the problem started.
Then that indicates you did not roll back to a known good backup.
Something is being blocked. Examine the system when this is
occurring, what states the processes are in and what's occurring
perhaps using sc_usage.
Ok we will give that a try.
And results are?
-dhan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Shoop
Computer Scientist
iWiring / U.S. Technical Services
