ubuntu 12.04 su fails : cannot execute /bin/bash no such file or directory

Question

After adding a user as sudoers as, su to this user fails with error message:

Cannot execute /bin/bash

: No such file or directory

I googled and found a lot of similar issue, mostly due to /etc/passwd file not being correct. It does not seem to be the case here as /bin/bash is a valid path.

Also, the two blank spaces in the error message is not a typo. They are on the error message.

su to other users works fine.

Also I copied the .bashrc file of a user for which 'su' was successful, but no success.

The .profile file does not seem to have anything special either.

I am not sure what I should look at next

Dmitry Grigoryev · Answer

This indeed looks like an issue with /etc/passwd. You should have an extra space there, and since the separator of passwd file is ":", that extra space is considered to be part of the name of the shell, e.g. " /bin/bash" or "/bin/bash ".

Check /etc/passwd for anomalies (trailing spaces, etc.) If nothing helps, delete the line corresponding to that user and add the user again via useradd.

ubuntu 12.04 su fails : cannot execute /bin/bash no such file or directory

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