You problem is indeed a very common one. The reason that your login is hanging is that although root is a local account, nss_ldap is looking to find out how many LDAP groups that root belongs to. To get around this, you can employ the nss_initgroups_ignoreusers directive to force nss_ldap to not query ldap for root's group membership: nss_initgroups_ignoreusers root,ldap As you can see above, I include root and the ldap user so that OpenLDAP starts up quickly. I also include three additional directives which aid in the smooth operation of my servers when OpenLDAP is not available. timelimit 15 # Search timelimit bind_timelimit 15 # Bind timelimit - abort after 15 seconds if fail to bind bind_policy soft # After failing to bind once, do not retry for this request I hope you find something here that may work for you. - Josh, RHCE Jon Miller wrote: > Hopefully this is a easy/common problem which I've simply not hit upon > yet. I have several RHEL 3.0 machines which have setup to authenticate > to a pair of openldap servers. Normally things are fine, but lately > we've had some issues with our LDAP servers where a query would hang in > the middle. Even worse, the replication server too displayed the same > behavior. Ouch, no logins. > Ideally this scenario would only affect employees logging into the > servers since our applications use locally setup accounts. However, this > is not the case and our LDAP issue can actually affect local account > authentication as well. > > Let me jump straight into a quick test case matrix: ( here, I have > changed my /etc/ldap.conf to point to a couple of bogus servers which > are merely running netcat to simulate a "hung" ldap query) > NSS Queried Successful | Comments > LDAP LDAP ? Login? | > -----------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------- > root login No No Yes | > pam_unix indirectly querying ldap via nss? > ldap login No Yes No | > "illegal user" without nss. > root login Yes Yes No | > queries ldap before giving prompt; ssh timeout. > ldap login Yes Yes Yes | > obvious. (only with correct servers in ldap.conf, ofcourse) > legend: "NSS LDAP": No means I only left "files" for the various > dbs(passwd, shadow, group). Yes means "ldap" is listed second in the > /etc/nsswitch.conf. > > The case I am interested in solving is the third. While trying to ssh > into the machine, you are never prompted a password because it is busy > querying LDAP. Compare that with my first test case with ldap left out > of the nsswitch.conf and the root login succeeds without _ever_ > attempting to query our LDAP server. > > Here is what my /etc/pam.d/system-auth file looks like: > #%PAM-1.0 > # This file is auto-generated. > # User changes will be destroyed the next time authconfig is run. > auth required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_env.so debug > auth sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so likeauth nullok > audit > auth sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_ldap.so use_first_pass > debug > auth required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so debug > > account required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so debug > account sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_localuser.so > account required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_ldap.so > > password required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_cracklib.so retry=3 type= > password sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so nullok > use_authtok shadow > password sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_ldap.so use_authtok > password required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so > > session requisite /lib/security/$ISA/pam_mkhomedir.so > session required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_limits.so > session required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so > session optional /lib/security/$ISA/pam_ldap.so > > I have methodically tested various scenarios and at this point believe > pam_unix is, one way or another, querying LDAP during it's > pam_sm_authenticate routine. But I have yet to either prove or disprove > that theory. I have the latest (RHEL 3.0) pam-0.75-69 rpm on the machine. > > -- > Thanks, > Jon > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Pam-list mailing list > Pam-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/pam-list _______________________________________________ Pam-list mailing list Pam-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/pam-list