Cannot login to root account on FreeBSD 7.0

[mdh]

--- On Fri, 10/31/08, Pramod Dematagoda <pmd.lotr.gandalf at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Pramod Dematagoda <pmd.lotr.gandalf at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Cannot login to root account on FreeBSD 7.0
> To: "Mel" <fbsd.questions at rachie.is-a-geek.net>
> Cc: "FreeBSD ML" <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
> Date: Friday, October 31, 2008, 11:09 AM
> On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 16:00 +0100, Mel wrote:
> > On Friday 31 October 2008 15:53:23 Pramod Dematagoda
> wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 07:09 -0700, Jeremy
> Chadwick wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 06:59:04PM +0530,
> Pramod Dematagoda wrote:
> > > > > But now I've faced a big problem, I
> can no longer seem to login to the
> > > > > root account where whenever I supply
> the proper credentials to the
> > > > > login screen, I always get thrown back
> to the login screen. This
> > > > > started happening after I installed
> D-bus and HAL through the FreeBSD
> > > > > ports which were built upon Xorg 1.5.1
> which I had built myself
> > > > > previously, so I am wondering if
> something I did may have caused the
> > > > > problem.
> > > >
> > > > Reboot the machine and at the FreeBSD
> beastie/loader menu, hit "4" to
> > > > boot into single-user mode.  Once there, do:
> > > >
> > > > # mount -a
> > > > # mount -o rw -u /
> > > > # passwd root
> > > >
> > > > And change the password.  "reboot"
> and you should be good to go.
> > >
> > > Hey Jeremy,
> > >
> > > Thanks for looking into the problem, but
> unfortunately your solution did
> > > not work, I changed the root password to
> something else, however I still
> > > cannot login to root once I boot FreeBSD
> normally.
> > 
> > There should be in indication in /var/log/messages or
> /var/log/auth.log.
> > 
> I checked /var/log/messages, and I found something
> interesting, it seems
> that csh exits with signal 11(core dumped) right after a
> root login,
> there is nothing out of the ordinary in auth.log. But now
> what do I do
> to fix the problem, change the shell?

Yeowzers.  
Change it to /bin/sh for now.  Once you're back up, it'd be interesting to debug this.  Would you like to?  
- mdh