[tlug] peculiar NIS problem

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

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We have an AIX NIS server.  Users get their mail from a FreeBSD box,
authenticating through NIS.  All the users can do this without a problem
save for one person.  Let's say his NIS user name is john and his
password is 1234.

I can log into the AIX machine as user john password 1234.

I try to telnet to port 110 on the mail server. I type user john, it
asks for a password, I type 1234 and get back that the password is
incorrect. 

ypcat passwd shows him.  Doing this with any other user works.  It's
only john.  I tried changing his password and pushing the maps out, but
it's the same result.  A new test user doesn't have the problem. 

Logs only show the message given when I type the password, that the
password is incorrect.  As, when logging into the mail server, one sees
what they type, I'm sure I've typed his password correctly, both on the
AIX and BSD box.  

I'm not sure where to look next.  I'd be grateful for any ideas.  We can
work around it by redoing his account, but I'd like to know what caused
this--why only this account out of about 90 of them.

Thanks for any help.

I can log into the AIX machine as user john password 1234.

I try to telnet to port 110 on the mail server. I type user john, it
asks for a password, I type 1234 and get back that the password is
incorrect. 

ypcat passwd shows him.  Doing this with any other user works.  It's
only john.  I tried changing his password and pushing the maps out, but
it's the same result.  A new test user doesn't have the problem. 

Logs only show the message given when I type the password, that the
password is incorrect.  As, when logging into the mail server, one sees
what they type, I'm sure I've typed his password correctly, both on the
AIX and BSD box.  

I'm not sure where to look next.  I'd be grateful for any ideas.  We can
work around it by redoing his account, but I'd like to know what caused
this--why only this account out of about 90 of them.

I tried googling but didn't find this situation--it seemed that either
people could log in with NIS or they couldn't.   Neither john nor any of
the other users have a system account on the mail server.  

I'm probably leaving out some obvious information here, but that's all I
can think of at the moment.


Thanks for any help.
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Scott Robbins

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