User Cannot Log In

There are many possible reasons for a user being unable to log in:

• User forgot password. To set up a new password for a user who has forgotten the previous one, run passwd for that user on another machine (naturally, you have to be the NIS+ administrator to do this).

• Mistyping password. Make sure the user knows the correct password and understands that passwords are case-sensitive and that the letter “o” is not interchangeable with the numeral “0,” nor is the letter “l” the same as the numeral “1.”

• “Login incorrect” type message. For causes other than simply mistyping the password, see Login Incorrect Message.

• The user's password privileges have expired (see Password Privilege Expiration).

• An inactivity maximum has been set for this user, and the user has passed it (see Specifying Maximum Number of Inactive Days).

• The user's nsswitch.conf file is incorrect. The passwd entry in that file must be one of the following five permitted configurations:

  • passwd: files

  • passwd: files nis

  • passwd: files nisplus

  • passwd: compat

  • passwd: compat passwd_compat: nisplus

  Any other configuration will prevent a user from logging in.

(See nsswitch.conf File Requirements for further details.)