New Users unable to SU

[JK]

On Sun, 8 Jan 2006 10:24:29 +1300
  Jonathan Chen <jonc at chen.org.nz> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 07, 2006 at 04:07:32PM -0500, Gerard Seibert wrote:
>> I seem to have developed a problem on my system. I can add new users
>> either via the adduser script or using 'sysinstall'. The problem is 
>>that
>> none of them can become root. They are all in the 'wheel' group, so 
>>it
>> should be working. I am the only user that can access the root. They 
>>can
>> use 'sudo' but that doesn't fix the problem.
> 
> The users need to be listed in /etc/group as belonging to `wheel'. 
>The
> login group-id isn't consulted by su(1).

And, rather than just have then su and then run tons of commands you 
really should list them in sudoers so they ( and you ) can do  ''sudo 
 command ..." .   You might find that that is safer than just su'ing 
and staying in a shell as root.