🚀 go-pugleaf

Three times in the last few days we've had a NeXT get into an odd state.
Any user who logs in from the console gets root's environment:
Terminal creates superuser shells, the dock is that of root, $HOME = /, etc.

rlogin from elsewhere, or "su username", gives a shell with the proper
owner, so the machine hasn't completely forgotten about that user.
Only valid account/passwords are accepted; you can't type just *anything*
and be logged in as root.

/usr/lib/NextStep/Loginwindow.app doesn't appear to have been modified.

---> Rebooting the machine restores normality. <---

We have lots of NeXTs, and most of them don't do this.

Other details:
    - We use YP for user accounts (+:::::: at end of /etc/passwd).
    - We have no netinfo server: each machine has only its local netinfo db.
    - Killing and restarting lookupd and nibindd doesn't help.
    - "nidump passwd ." looks normal.
    - A toy program which calls getpwnam() gives normal results.
    - No suspicious messages appear in /usr/adm/messages or /tmp/console.log.
    - Loginwindow.app leaves the correct user name in /etc/utmp,
	so "who" says "slevy   console ..." when slevy logs in,
	even though the logged-in stuff sees root's environment.

*Suspicious item:*  I think that netinfo is misbehaving somehow.
	When in this state, we found that, even though "nidump printcap ."
	showed the correct stuff and "lpr" was willing to queue requests,
	and deposit them in the local spool directory, it couldn't deliver
	them to the (remote) print hosts.

	Any attempt to e.g. "lpc restart printername" yielded an
	error in /usr/adm/messages:  "lpd[nnnn]: unknown printer: printername".

Anyone seen anything like this?  Any ideas of things to look for?

    Stuart Levy, Geometry Center, University of Minnesota
    slevy@geom.umn.edu