[Bug 1318168] Re: su: Failed to create session: No such file or directory

[Philipp Huebner]

** Package changed: ejabberd (Ubuntu) => systemd (Ubuntu)

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Title:
  su: Failed to create session: No such file or directory

Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I am using the command "su" quite often without any problems. The
  following "su" is just a senseless example, but it will demonstrate
  the problem quite well. In this example I want to make an echo as sshd
  user (could be any other user like www-data, rabbitmq, or others as
  well):

  su sshd -s /bin/sh -c echo

  Doing this worked find, but beginning with Ubuntu 14.04, I get strange
  log entries in /var/log/auth.log like:

  May 10 14:21:18 abel su[22315]: Successful su for sshd by root
  May 10 14:21:18 abel su[22315]: + /dev/pts/2 root:sshd
  May 10 14:21:18 abel su[22315]: pam_unix(su:session): session opened for user sshd by root(uid=0)
  May 10 14:21:18 abel su[22315]: pam_systemd(su:session): Failed to create session: No such file or directory
  May 10 14:21:18 abel su[22315]: pam_unix(su:session): session closed for user sshd

  Especially the 4th line with "Failed to create session: No such file
  or directory" didn't appear on earlier system. With Ubuntu 13.10 it
  looked like this:

  May 10 14:22:30 davy su[18202]: Successful su for sshd by root
  May 10 14:22:30 davy su[18202]: + /dev/pts/1 root:sshd
  May 10 14:22:30 davy su[18202]: pam_unix(su:session): session opened for user sshd by root(uid=0)
  May 10 14:22:30 davy su[18202]: pam_unix(su:session): session closed for user sshd

  
  the /etc/passwd for user sshd is the same on 13.10 and 14.04:

  sshd:x:103:65534::/var/run/sshd:/usr/sbin/nologin

  Changing shell to /bin/false or /bin/sh or alike doesn't help. The
  problem is, that certain monitoring or security systems don't this
  entry and are complaining all the time.

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