[CentOS] Re: useradd: unable to lock password file

[Sean O'Connell]

On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 15:40 +1000, Nick Bryant wrote:
> > On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 15:32 +1000, Nick Bryant wrote:
> > > > On 8/31/05, Nick Bryant <list at everywhereinternet.com> wrote:
> > > > > Ok $200USD for anyone who can help me fix this now.... rebooted and
> > it
> > > > > doesn't say the file is locked anymore... the useradd command just
> > > > doesn't
> > > > > die or return anything and just sits there chewing data :(
> > > > >
> > > > > Man down.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > How about pwck and/or grpck ?
> > > >
> > > > And if that fixes it, send the money to the CentOS developers.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Be glad too.
> > >
> > > Ok I think I found the problem... is there a maximum number of entries
> > in
> > > /etc/passwd? I just removed the last 1000 lines and its working again,
> > total
> > > entires in the file now 59463.
> > >
> > > Problem is its really slow to add new users now (around 10 seconds). We
> > have
> > > several scripts that create newusers so I guess that's what caused the
> > > locking situation.
> > >
> > > Could a corruption be whats slowing it down (running pwck -r now) or am
> > I
> > > just approaching the limits of a flat file auth scheme?
> > 
> > Take a look at /etc/login.defs the stock max UID is 60000.
> 
> Bingo! That's got to be what caused it to just keel.
> 
> [root at bill syd01]# cut -d":" -f 3 passwd |sort -rn |more
> 60000
> 59999
> 
> If I just change that file will I need to restart anything? Sorry for the
> noob question but I'm a +60K user virgin. (The sub-dir 32K limit for home
> dirs was equally as big a learning curve ;o)

Nick-

I don't think you need to restart anything. login.defs is part of the
shadow-utils rpm which looks to just contain applications. i suspect
they simply read it at invocation.

-- 
Sean