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From: rodean@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Bruce Rodean)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: /etc/passwd file is busy, help.
Message-ID: <5570453@hpfcdc.HP.COM>
Date: 23 Jul 90 16:11:39 GMT
References: <3242@bnr-rsc.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Ft. Collins, CO.
Lines: 29

In article <2538@inews.intel.com> kseshadr@quasar.intel.com (Kishore Seshadri) writes:
>In article <3242@bnr-rsc.UUCP>, pdwalker@bcarh667 writes:
>>I am having a problem with my /etc/passwd file.  Whenever I try to 'vipw' or
>>use 'passwd' I get the following message:
>>	Temporary file busy; try again later.	(with passwd)
>>	vipw: password file busy		(with vipw)
>>
>>I am guessing that at sometime in the past, the file was locked to prevent
>>filesharing, but the process died leaving the file in the locked state.	
>I'm not sure what U*IX you're using, but the ones I've seen usually create
>an intermediate file called /etc/ptmp. On Ultrix and some other systems,
>vipw tries to open the /etc/ptmp with the O_EXCL|O_CREAT flags. If the open
>gets an EEXIST error, it prints the busy message and quits. You can fix
>>this by deleting the /etc/ptmp file. You should probably do a diff on
>/etc/ptmp and /etc/passwd before blowing away /etc/ptmp and see what has
>been changed. On SunOS, vipw opens the passwd file and tries to get an
>exclusive lock using flock. If the file is locked, you should look for
>a vipw process still running and kill it (think twice before you do this).
>This should free the lock.

Kishore Seshadri has it right.  Other commands in addition to passwd and
vipw which utilize /etc/ptmp are chfn and chsh.  So make sure no of
these are executing, and then you may safely remove /etc/ptmp.

Bruce Rodean
rodean@hpfcla.fc.hp.com

This is not an official response of Hewlett-Packard Co.  No guarantees
of any kind are implied or given.