su: incorrect password

dballagh · 08-30-2007, 05:58 PM

I ran into the same problem on RHEL 4 and found that the user account was disabled by pam_tally. I ran the following command to clear the failed login attempts and now everything is working fine.

pam_tally --user joe --reset

homonia · 11-19-2009, 09:19 PM

Hi! I also encountered this problem "su: incorrect password".
Then i find the user (for example: "homonia")to which i wanted to change doesn't have a corresponding record in the file /etc/shadow, so i edit a new line for it in /etc/shadow manually as follows:

(You should log in as root.)
chmod u+w /etc/shadow
echo "homonia:!!:13818:0:99999:7:::" >> /etc/shadow
chmod u-w /etc/shadow

Then it works! I can switch to the user "homonia".

I hope it'll help you. Gook luck!

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win32sux · 11-20-2009, 02:27 AM

homonia, we value your time and energy, and encourage you to spend it helping members with current issues. I'm closing this zombie thread so it may rest in peace. Please don't make a habit of necroposting.