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Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 01:40:39 +0200
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net>
Subject: Re: permission problems w/ ordinary user ....
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On Sat, 02 Aug 2014 18:28:47 -0500, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
> 
> .... I have been trying to setup the regular user (me, non-root) on my 
> newly minted FreeBSD 9.3 box. I tried su-ing from tooy & ssh-ing in as 
> me from another box, both give weird results, see the following from my 
> syslog:
> 
> [...]
> Aug  2 18:23:01 kabini1 sshd[1252]: _secure_path: cannot stat 
> /home/wam/.login_conf: Permission denied
> 
> 
> also, the home-directory keeps getting the 'x' permission bit set to off 
> by .... something ....

I think you have described the reason for the problem:
The x attribute for a directory means "enter and search"
and should be _set_ for the user. If it's not, the user
cannot enter his own home directory or access files
within it. In this case, /home/wam/.login_conf cannot
be read which seems to be neccessary for the login
process.

You need to find that "something" that created or altered
/home/wam with the x attribute off. Login as root and
correct the setting manually, so you should be able to
login afterwards.

This is how the resulting "ls -l /home" output it should
look like for your user:

	drwx------  [...] wam     wam     [...] wam/
	   ^

(This is minimum permissions; drwxrwxr-x or drwxr-x---
are other common examples.)

How did you introduce the user to the system? Did you
use "adduser" or "pw add"?




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...