I'm not sure what happened, but all of a sudden I was unable to add, modify, or delete users. I think it's related to the passwd issue brought up by steve@corp.gulf.net on 1999-05-22. I am using Red Hat 6.1, and it has been stable for about 15 months without any problems like this.

I can't add users. I get a "useradd: unable to open password file". (same error with the adduser command)

The only clue I have is that whenever I try to change a password I get a "Critical error - Immediate abort". Upon looking in the /var/log/messages file, I see these lines:

Mar 4 14:23:51 rover PAM_pwdb[6375]: user (xxx/533) update failed; pwdb: internal failure - seek help

Please advise. I have looked in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow and the files look fine. I ran authconfig and was unable to affect any changes because I got the same "Unable to open password file" error.

It doesn't work using Webmin or Linuxconf either.

Thank you...

Install the source for passwd or useradd. Compile with debugging info on. Run gdb (gnu debugger) and step throught the code until you find the problem.

Sorry

Gary

all fixed! This is from our ISP...thanks for everybody's help on this one...

> I did a
> chattr -i /etc/passwd
> chattr -a /etc/passwd
> and it didn't make a difference

> then I I did chattr -ia on /etc/shadow as well and it worked!