Re: [gentoo-user] Error on login: *** glibc detected *** double free or corruption...

[Rumen Yotov]

Rennie deGraaf wrote:
> A few minutes ago, I discovered that I can't log into my firewall
>
> If I try SSH from inside, it gives me my login banner and immediately
> disconnects, without prompting for a password. This suggested to me that
> when trying to clean up the mess left by upgrading the shadow package
> yesterday (and first removing pam-login) as reccomended by a
> GLSA-200606-02, I left something incorrectly configured.
>
> If I try SSH from outside, the connection times out. I don't know why
> this happens - the iptables configuration should allow SSH connections
> from outside, and the timing suggests a problem before reaching the
> login or pam code.
>
> If I try to log in via a virtual TTY on a serial port, I get the message
> "*** glibc detected *** double free or corruption (!prev): 0x142e1cc8
> ***" (the address varies) after entering a username, but before entering
> a password. This suggests a problem with either the login or pam
> software; I can't see how a configuration error could cause this.
>
> If I try to log in via the system console, I get the same error as with
> the serial line.
>
> My firewall is running a tightly locked-down minimal install of Gentoo
> 2005.1 with the hardened kernel and toolkit and all relavant security
> updates applied.  I think that the kernel is 2.6.11-hardened-r15.  Other
> than my inability to log in, it seems to be working - the DNS server is
> still responding, and it still seems to be forwarding packets correctly.
>  The system has been up since some time in late august or early
> september 2005.
>
> I guess that the only way to get into the system and try to fix it is to
> reboot into single-user mode, but before I take it down for maintenance,
> I'd like to know if I'm dealing with a software problem or a
> configuration problem (since with my firewall down, I will have no way
> to look up more information from the Internet).  Does anyone know what
> this error signifies in this context, or have any suggestions on how to
> recover?
>
> Thanks,
> Rennie deGraaf
>
Hi,
Just reboot and try again.
IIRC the solution was to rebuild "openssh" after the new "shadow"
package within the same ssh-session (assuming that's the way you do it).
HTH.Rumen