Excuse me, but I don't understand the nature of this reply. First of all, I'm not using Redhat; I'm using debian. Secondly, I know perfectly well what pam is, what bash is, what man pages are, and how to read howtos, and I do all these things. I am sure, however, that your pointers would be helpful to somebody who did not know these things and use these tools. I was simply asking a question about an isolated occurrence of ending up at some kind of "pam unix session". I know Janina's advice is well-meant, but while my question may have been an indication of ignorance of a particular circumstance, it wasn't indicative ot ignorance of tools and documentation or failure to use them. Cheryl