RHEL4 System locking up during useradd or passwd

[Starrena]

Hello,

My RHEL4 system that is the NIS server has been locking up when I do a the command useradd and/or yppasswd or regular passwd commands.

It does not happen every time but it does occur about 80% of the time. Rebooting resolves the problem but I want to prevent the lockups.

Thanks!
Starrena

[Rubberman]

Does it happen when the password change is initiated on a remote system, only on the NIS server system, or either?

[Starrena]

It happens on either.

I recently tried doing yppasswd from the NIS client and it locked up the NIS Server.

On the NIS Server it also locks up when I do a useradd or change/set a user's password using the passwd command.

This does not happen all of the time but it happens most of the time. When the NIS Server locks up, I reboot and am able to change the password or add the user with no problem...at least until the next time.

[Rubberman]

When it "locks up" I take it that it no longer responds to keyboard or mouse input. Can you still ping the system from another computer? Have you run hardware diagnostics on this system? Hopefully you have a backup NIS server... .

[Starrena]

Yes, it no longer responds to keyboard and mouse entries. However, I am able to ping the system from a client machine. Since the error only occurs during useradd and password changes I am more likely to suspect software not hardware as being the issue.

[Rubberman]

Yes, it no longer responds to keyboard and mouse entries. However, I am able to ping the system from a client machine. Since the error only occurs during useradd and password changes I am more likely to suspect software not hardware as being the issue.

That's what I was trying to help determine, whether it is hardware or software. It sounds like either something has munged the NIS software on the server, or the database is corrupted. Have you tried rebuilding the NIS database?

[Starrena]

I haven't thought about rebuilding the NIS Database...good suggestion. How do I go about doing this?

[Rubberman]

Sorry, but I don't know - it just seemed like a good idea to me. I've never had to manage an NIS/NIS+ environment, other than from the user perspective. I do suggest reading the yp man pages. It talks about building the database in the ypinit manpage.