cannot add users or change passwords

**suprtiger** · 03-25-2003

I have a red hat linux computer that has been up and running for almost 1 year. Last week it would not let me add any new users or change a password for an established user.
I am not sure why this machine would start doing this.
When I try to add a user it tells me give me an manipulation error.
When I try to add a new user, the error says that it cannot lock the password file.
I usually use vipw to check the user file but I cannot use this command any more on this machine. Since I have not seen this error before, I am stumped. I don't want to start over with this machine because of the user accounts that already running.
Any ideas or help would be appreciated.

**genlee** · 03-25-2003

Run "lsof" and see if any other program has your passwd file open.

**suprtiger** · 03-25-2003

Can I run this option from a remote host? I tried it and I received a message that the command is unknown. I am not a work now and have logged in from my home computer,

**suprtiger** · 03-25-2003

oops forgot, I did log in as root and tried the command,

**genlee** · 03-25-2003

You probably don't have it installed then. What distro do you have?

**suprtiger** · 03-25-2003

Red Hat is 7.0 Guiness.

**genlee** · 03-25-2003

Code:

rpm -Uvh ftp&#58;//rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/8.0/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/lsof-4.63-2.i386.rpm

that will install lsof

**wassy121** · 03-25-2003

check to see that your disk isn't full. That would be the most probable problem. `df -h` will show you how full it is (in real world numbers like megs and gigs). Also, try `df -ih` to see how many inodes are taken up, the disk could be partially full, but have a lot of small files (possibly from a runaway process) that are taking up all the inodes.

**suprtiger** · 03-26-2003

This is what I see when this command is ran.
I would say that this machine has enough room left.

# df -lh
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda8 251M 78M 160M 33% /
/dev/hda1 23M 9.8M 11M 46% /boot
/dev/hda6 8.6G 749M 7.3G 9% /home
/dev/hda5 8.6G 1.9G 6.2G 23% /usr
/dev/hda7 251M 43M 195M 18% /var

**genlee** · 03-26-2003

Generally when you can't get a lock on the file is because it is open by another proc. I still suggest using lsof to see if some proc has it opened that you don't know about. Or if you have to, reboot the box but I would rather fix it without rebooting. This isn't windows

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