Unable to login as normal user on CentOS

Question

My normal user account isn't working correctly in CentOS, but logging in as root works fine. What should I do to debug/fix the problem?

Answer 1

Check the logs to see if there are any messages of note there. Try resetting your password, not saying you don't know it, but a reset will fix a couple possible issues. Then check your /etc/passwd file look for the line with your username on it and see if there is anything out of the ordinary i.e. your shell being set to 'nologin' or 'false'. Last you could remove the user acct and then add it back.

Answer 2

1. Check your logs (/var/log/messages, /var/log/security)
2. Check your user has a valid login shell
3. Check the output of faillog -u $USER (and reset with pam_tally)
4. Check for the presence of /etc/nologin
5. Check the output of chage -l $USER
6. reset the password to a known, simple value and try again
7. Post the details of what happenned when you ran through the steps above here and what is now appearing the logs

Answer 3

You may have not used the -p option in useradd, or maybe you were like me and supplied a plain text password with the -p option, thinking that would work. The best thing to try at this point is the passwd command. Its format is:

passwd [user]

where [user] is the account's username. You'll be asked to enter a new password and to verify it. For security purposes, the password will not be displayed as you type.