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

Super User Asked on December 5, 2021

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

One 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.

Answered by Dmitry Grigoryev on December 5, 2021

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