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To: Andre Oppermann <oppermann@telehouse.ch>
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From: "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM>
Subject: Re: su root hangs when logged in via SSH 
References: <5.0.1.4.1.20001213153948.01fc9df0@marble.sentex.ca> <3A37E70C.3A935224@telehouse.ch> 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 13 Dec 2000 22:15:56 +0100."
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> Mike Tancsa wrote:
> > 
> > Yeah, I had a similar problem to this in the past where syslogd was kind of
> > hung, and the su was blocking waiting for I guess syslog to return.  If you
> > can login as root on the console, kill syslogd, restart it and see if su
> > works once again.
> 
> Nope, it does not work again. But after a couple of seconds after
> restarting syslogd I've got this messages on the console:
>  "syslogd: timed out waiting for child"
> 
> Another note, syslogd does not go with a normal kill, it needs a kill -9
> to make it into heaven.
> 
> Could this be related to having a serial console?

This sounds very familiar to me.  I had a problem like this in the
past, and it was a case of syslog blocking trying to write to /dev/console
and blocking.  The comconsole port starts a getty on /dev/console, which
might be surprising if you also had one running on ttyd0.

I don't recall the details, but I think that the serial console is 
definately related to your problem.


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