pw groupadd/useradd fail when the nscd cache is used for name/group resolution

[Michael Proto]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Ulrich Spörlein<uqs at spoerlein.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 09.07.2009 at 16:13:25 +0300, Vlad Galu wrote:
>> I've stumbled upon this while installing postgres. In
>> /etc/nsswitch.conf I had "group: cache files compat" and "passwd:
>> cache files compat". Once I commented them out things started working
>> again. Before the change, this is how it looked like:
>>
>> -- cut here --
>> [root at vgalu /usr/ports/databases/postgresql84-server]# pw group add pgsql -g 70
>> pw: group disappeared during update
>> [root at vgalu /usr/ports/databases/postgresql84-server]# pw group add pgsql -g 70
>> pw: group 'pgsql' already exists
>> [root at vgalu /usr/ports/databases/postgresql84-server]#
>> -- and here --
>>
>> Shouldn't 'files' be used upon a cache miss? If this is a PEBKAC,
>> sorry for the noise.
>
> Just a me too. This is most likely because nscd is also caching negative
> lookups. The usual workaround would be to restart it using
> /etc/rc.d/nscd restart
>

A slightly lower-impact alternative would be to use "nscd -i passwd"
to invalidate the password cache.


-Proto