Problem with xscreensaver

[sfmusicman]

I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for this, but I recently ran into a problem with xscreensaver. My box is running SUSE 9.0 Prof, and Ximian Desktop 2. A problem cropped up this weekend where xscreensaver will no longer accept my password when I try to unlock the screen. It was working fine until a couple of days ago. My ID and password work fine when I log in to my desktop, but the problem seems to be isolated to xscreensaver. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Thanks.....

[scinerd]

this could be way off but I have seen some wierd problems in the past when password length is over 8 char. Most of the time it's a problem in a mixed env with solaris but if your password is over 8 char you might try a shorter one and test it.

[sfmusicman]

Thx -- I've tried shorter length passwords, with no luck. I've seen some posts on the web having something to do with the /etc/permissions.easy file (I think that's the correct location,) and changing the numerical value at the end of the xscreensaver parameter from 0755 to 4755, but that hasn't changed anything. I'm a relative linux newbie, though.....

[X_console]

Try moving your ~/.xscreensaver file to another location and have it recreated. See if you're still experiencing the same problem.

[sfmusicman]

Sorry it took so long to post back, but here is the solution I found. The permissions on the xscreensaver file were wrong. Permissions should look like this:

-rwxr-sr-x 1 root shadow

"shadow" needs to be the group owner. Somehow the group owner was changed to "root." Once I switched to shadow, the screensaver would unlock with my password.