error opening shadow group file

[Duane Attaway]

On 6 Dec 2002, Brad Crotchett wrote:

> I have a server that I cannot add users to.  Anytime I run useradd or
> adduser I get the error: 'useradd: error opening shadow group file'. 
> When I look in /etc I have the following files:
> 
> group
> group.lock
> gshadow
> gshadow.lock
> shadow
> shadow.lock
> mpasswd
> passwd
> passwd.lock
> 
> I blow away all of the lock files and try again, but I get the same
> error and the lock files reappear.  Anyone seen this before?

I'd first see if another process currently has the shadow password file 
open with the fuser command:

fuser /etc/group*
fuser /etc/gshadow*
etc...

and if fuser returns a number, you have a winner.  Also, check to see if 
those files have the immutable bit set:

lsattr /etc/group*
...

My system uses /etc/group- as the shadow file.

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