1

Most of the issues I found are related to new installs, root password being disabled by default, or things falling apart after some changes. None of that applies here: in my case nothing was changed, nothing new installed; everything was working before just fine.

Tried: su, su -, su root, su - root - all return su: Authentication failure. Even changed the password to the same one using the VPS control panel, nothing.

This happens on a Debian 10 ('Buster') VPS powered by Virtualizor.

ᴍᴇʜᴏᴠ
  • 577
  • 1
  • 6
  • 20

2 Answers2

1

Im not sure if authentication failure because of additional characters after mouse-click. For example in Debian 10 I open terminal and type 'su', then press Enter, then my password and authentication succeeds. BUT in Parrot Security OS when I open terminal and write 'su' and press Enter, then i have authentication failure. I honestly dont know why is this happening, but clearly this happens for me not because of additional characters from mouse clicks. One solution worked for me, but instead of 'su' command I must write 'sudo su' OR 'sudo -i'. With those commands authentication succeeds. My question is: can someone explain me whats the difference between 'su' and 'sudo su' and why in Debian 10 command 'su' works and in ParrotOS it doesnt? Also some people are not recommending to use 'sudo su'. They recommend instead use command 'sudo -i'. Why?

Robbie
  • 11
  • 1
  • 1
    If you have a new question, please ask it by clicking the [Ask Question](https://serverfault.com/questions/ask) button. Include a link to this question if it helps provide context. - [From Review](/review/late-answers/505558) – music2myear Dec 17 '21 at 18:09
1

TL;DR: Mac OS? Restart Terminal.

I noticed something strange as I was trying to copy the console output to paste here: when I selected some text with my mouse, instead of actually selecting, it kept typing some gibberish into the console. So if it's adding extra characters when I mouse-select, it may as well be doing this when I paste my password, and that could be why it fails.

This may be due to the fact that my network failed and got disconnected a few minutes before the issue appeared.

I restarted the Terminal session (this is on Mac OS), tried again and it worked. Hope this helps some Googlers.

UPDATE Got the same issue again, except this time it behaved normal when mouse-selecting, but would still insert some random characters when I hit paste. Double-checked by pasting into the shell prompt (where it's visible) and sure enough, some random stuff was being added. Restarting terminal helped.

ᴍᴇʜᴏᴠ
  • 577
  • 1
  • 6
  • 20