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+). I seem to recall seeing a similar problem years back (RH7, RH8 era) which affected both the group and gshadow files... a 3rd party made a patched version of something which solved the problem, and then eventually the problem was resolved in the distribution. The details are all very fuzzy by now :-) After a certain period the gshadow becomes corrupted to such an extent that using useradd, userdel, etc brings the machine to its knees for maybe 10 minutes using all swap and all ram and driving utilization through the roof and then it thankfully recovers. The corruption seems to be bits and pieces of the particular group repeated over and over, with the valid entries all the way at the end of the line. As an example, on this machine the netexplorer group has around 100 users... after the line in gshadow became corrupted I simply snipped the whole line leaving the entry as (the entry in the group file was fine with all users intact). netexplorer:!:: I then added a user "acall" to the group, it was added successfully to the group file, but gshadow now contained the following... netexplorer:!::orer,lorer,,,er,,,lorer,,,lorer,,,orer,plorer,!,rer,orer,!,or er,orer,!,,er,,,,,,,,,acall adding a second user "gptest" leaves the gshadow entry in this state... netexplorer:!::orer,lorer,,orer,er,,r,lorer,,orer,lorer,,orer,orer,plorer,!, rer,orer,!,orer,orer,!,,er,rer,,,,lorer,lorer,er,r,orer,lorer,,,er,,,lorer,, ,lorer,,,orer,plorer,!,rer,orer,!,orer,orer,!,,er,,,,,,,,,acall,gptest As you can see this can snowball the length of the line in no time. Any ideas, suggestions? Thanks, >>>>> Mike <<<<<
