Corrupted gshadow files with many users in group

[Mogens Kjaer]

Mike Cisar wrote:
> Have a system running FC2 and have recently noticed problems with the
> gshadow file becoming corrupted on groups with a large number of members
> (100+).
...
> Any ideas, suggestions?

I've tried this on a FC3 system:

groupadd guser0
useradd -ctest0 -gguser0 -Gguser0 -psecret user0

And the last line in /etc/gshadow reads:

guser0:!::!,,,,,,,,,,,,,!,0,,,!,!,!,user0

Then I did the following trick:

Install the shadow-utils SRPMS and
if necessary, the gettext-devel RPM.

cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
rpmbuild -bb shadow-utils.spec
rpm --nodeps -e shadow-utils
rpm -i /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/shadow-utils-4.0.3-37.i386.rpm

and the problem had disappeard:

I remove the guser0 and user0 entries in /etc/shadow /etc/passwd
/etc/group and /etc/gshadow, and run the two lines above again,
and now the last line in /etc/gshadow contains:

guser0:!::user0

Strange, isn't it?

Mogens

-- 
Mogens Kjaer, Carlsberg A/S, Computer Department
Gamle Carlsberg Vej 10, DK-2500 Valby, Denmark
Phone: +45 33 27 53 25, Fax: +45 33 27 47 08
Email: mk at crc.dk Homepage: http://www.crc.dk