Problems with su/csh on Ultrix 4.0/DECstation 5000

[Gary Weimer]

In article <1990Nov27.005226.18032 at sarah.albany.edu> boehme at unvax.union.edu (Eric M. Boehm) writes:
>
>I have run into a problem out of the blue. Suddenly, our DECstation 500
>won't let me use su to switch to another user. I get the following error
>message:
>
>getwd: can't open .. -- can't start new shell
>
>This happened suddenly. Also, after rebooting the machine, su may work
>once or twice and then give the error message. This also screws up
>commands I have in crontab -- they do not get run. Lately, even commands
>running as root in crontab weren't being run. I even went so far as to
>redo the Ultrix installation. That did not help. 

Try changing to a different directory. The error message is telling you that
you do not have permission (read? execute?--I forget what you need) for the
previous directory (..). For some reason, su needs to access every directory
in your current path to be able to access the /etc/passwd file (added
security?). Changing directories, or adding permission to directories in
your path should fix the problem.

Gary Weimer