[CentOS] Zombie users in Centos6

Wed Aug 6 15:32:31 UTC 2014
Mark Tinberg <mtinberg at wisc.edu>

On Aug 6, 2014, at 9:28 AM, Cosme Corrêa <cosmefc at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> I have a machine with PAM using LDAP.
> Some old users do not disappear from:
> 
>  * getent passwd
> 
> But, they are not in:
> 
>  * /etc/passwd or
>  * LDAP
> 
> Where are they?


Usually when you use LDAP for NSS you have a caching daemon to cut down on the number of round trips and latency (every time you need to map a userID to a name requires a call to LDAP) so maybe your cache is not expiring the old entries yet.  NSCD which comes with GLIBC is a common cache, otherwise SSSD or WINBIND are also commonly used.  Restarting your cache should help.

— 
Mark Tinberg
mtinberg at wisc.edu