I've encountered a thoroughly interesting and somewhat perplexing issue with a user login. The basic symptom is that the user can't login - and as root I can't complete an su as that user. # su - username (hangs) ^C /var/log/secure however suggests a successful connection.. Jan 18 12:25:11 machine su: pam_unix(su-l:session): session opened for user username by root(uid=0) Jan 18 12:26:01 machine su: pam_unix(su-l:session): session closed for user username Now we have a system where the several hundred users in /home are actually symlinks to NFS attached storage on /data/user[1..2]. Which is the case for this user. [user2]# ls -lad username/ drwxr-xr-x 46 username groupname 8192 Jan 15 07:53 username/ # pwd /data/user2 However when running an ls on the login node it shows they have a directory in home that is *not* a symlink, unlike others. # ls -lad /home/username drwxr-xr-x 46 username groupname 8192 Jan 15 07:53 /home/username/ # ls -lad /home/lev lrwxrwxrwx 1 lev home 15 Apr 15 2014 /home/lev -> /data/user1/lev *Except* when one does a directory listing from /home itself (where it has a different groupname)! [root@edward home]# ls -la /home/ .. lrwxrwxrwx 1 username home 19 Jul 26 2013 sanujig -> /data/user2/username Note that the two directories have the same inode. # ls -id /home/username/ 1081162059 /home/sanujig/ ]# ls -id /data/user2/username 1081162059 /data/user2/username Fascinating, eh? -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt