UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

I'm hoping someone here can bail me out of this one.
I have a box running SCO Openserver 5.0.2. I can log in as root fine, but if I try to log into any other account, I get:

Last succenful login for xxxx "bunch of symbols"


Standard copyright stuff

and returns to a login prompt.

What should I check or do?

Thanks,
Craig

what is standard copyright stuff? also how are you logging into the other account? are you logging out then logging back in? or are you using SU?

if your display is garbled try typing 'reset' then hit enter.

Perhaps I need to explain better.

>what is standard copyright stuff?

After verifying the password, it displays copyright info for SCO, Microsoft, and UNIX labs.
It seems to make it through the password part. It used to then display terminal type(ansi, xterm, vt52, etc) and then a command prompt.
What it does instead is garble the date of the last succesful login, show the copyright info, and instead of showing terminal type and command prompt, it goes back to "login:"at the bottom of the screen.

>also how are you logging into the other account?

The only account I can get into is root(which I guess is better than nothing, at least I can try and fix it). The whole login process works perfectly for root.(the date is shown in legible ascii text)

> are you logging out then logging back in? or are you using SU?
If I try try to su to a regular user from root It displays "process killed" and returns me to the command prompt as root. I don't know If this is even supposed to work, I never tried to su to lesser permissions before.


My only unix experience prior to this has been with linux - Redhat, Mandrake, some Debian. This box runs a proprietary application. It has no /home directory. The .profile file is in /usr/xxxx, the directory where this application lives. I don't know if this is normal or not, I have nothing to compare it to.

>if your display is garbled try typing 'reset' then hit enter.
Hopefully I've explained it better this time. I can't get to a shell other than root, which logs in and works fine.

when logged in as root try changing the shell of the user that you want to log in as to whatever shell root has.

Tried that, all users, including root use sh. I did try to change some to ksh but the end result is the same.

find out what kinda emulation u are useing and change your term setting.

echo $TERM
ibm3151

export TERM=vt100

echo $TERM
vt100

try a few differnt terms.

How do I change the terminal if I can't log in?

As root I can change terminals.
I guess what I need to know is what takes place once I enter my user and password. If I enter an invalid password, i get "login failed", so It is passing password verification.

I gues what I need to know is what takes place after user&password are entered. What does the OS (SCO OpenServer 5.0.2) do then? (launch a script, etc) With this I may be able to track down the problem. What if any logs would contain error messages that would be useful?
Thanks for all your help so far.