[Info-vax] stumped by SSH

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <n9eueq$8vf$1 at news.kjsl.com>, helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de
(Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)) writes: 

Several replies today, but none related to what seems the only hot 
clue:

> The only other difference is the presence of
> DECW$XAUTHORITY.DECW$XAUTH;1 in the simple account which works and the 
> lack of it in the simple account which doesn't work.  This doesn't seem 
> relevant, as I am looging in via the command line, but you never know.
> I then checked to see which accounts have this file.  Some do, some 
> don't.  In each category, there are some accounts for which I know the 
> password and some for which I don't.  So [drumroll, please], I went 
> through all to see which work and, lo and behold, I can log in via ssh 
> if and only if DECW$XAUTHORITY.DECW$XAUTH;1 is present.
> 
> Does this make sense?
> 
> Is it documented?
> 
> Should the error messages (both client and server) be different?
> 
> Presumably this file gets created when setting display settings in 
> DECwindows.  I suppose I can try to set this up in the accounts which 
> don't work (manipulating them to allow this) and see if it helps.  
> However, I don't recall ever having logged in to the bare-bones account 
> which does work, so I'm not sure where the DECW$XAUTHORITY.DECW$XAUTH;1 
> file comes from.
> 
> Interestingly, the CREATION dates for this file in the corresponding 
> accounts is quite recent (hours to days old), except for one of the 
> accounts, where it is a few months old.  (The modification time is 
> always shortly after the creation time.)  In some cases, but not all, 
> this timestamp corresponds to the last successful login a) from outside 
> my cluster and b) from a specific remote adddress.  (In other words, in 
> one case the timestamp corresponds to a known login time from outside, 
> but logging in (from elsewhere) to the same account today did not update 
> that timestamp.  Could this depend on some ssh option on the client 
> side.)
> 
> As a quick test, I copied this file from another account into the
> account which doesn't work, but with no effect.  I didn't expect it to 
> work, though.
> 
> Commnents?  Suggestions?  Questions?
>