Cannot login to root account on FreeBSD 7.0

[Pramod Dematagoda]

On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 08:19 -0700, mdh wrote:
> --- 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

I found something a bit more interesting, csh crashes regardless of the
user account to which it is used for, so something is wrong with csh
itself and not the root account.

Regards,
Pramod Dematagoda