Bug 235202

I encountered similar error message as well.  Since Matej did not post
the exact error msg, I'll supplement with what I saw.

    The user database cannot be read.  This problem is most likely
    caused by a mismatch between /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
    or /etc/group and /etc/gshadow.  The program will exit now.

I also run strace
    strace system-config-users
It revealed that system-config-users did read from /etc/passwd, but
did not even attempt to open /etc/shadow, /etc/gshadow, nor
/etc/group.  Also I got no error when running pwck.


I'm attaching my /etc/passwd.  Could you please point out what is
wrong with it?  I installed FC6 on said system, added a few users
using system-config-users, do "yum update" regularly; then suddenly I
got error msg when running system-config-users.  In my case I did
*NOT* "copy /etc/ from another computer."

Created attachment 154378 [details]
/etc/passwd file for comment#1, from Tim Taiwanese Liim.

Tim, don't do it -- /etc/passwd is highly security-related, don't post it on the
net.

Hi, Matej,
Thanks for the warning, and for hiding the /etc/passwd
attachment.  (I guess you hid it because I got "Access Denied"
when accessing said attachment.)

I understand /etc/shadow has the encrypted passwd, thus
definitely no post.  But what is in /etc/passwd that is secret?
Almost all of the users in my /etc/passwd are standard ones from
Fedora (root et al), so anyone with Linux knowledge knows the
content.  Also the /etc/passwd attachment has no ip address
associated with it, so how does it compromise security?  As a
general precaution I agree with you that "no post /etc/passwd."
But in this particular case I was not able to identify the risk.
Please advise.  Appreciate!

No, actually I was wrong it is not so bad -- just cracker could know the gids of
users on your computer, which probably could be misused. /etc/passwd used to be
the main target of attacks and I get easily paranoid about it.

I guess it would be much more profitable for all of us, to run pwck (package
shadow-utils) on your /etc/passwd and post results here.

Here is the output of pwck:
    [root@qyam ~]# pwck
    [root@qyam ~]#      
ie. no error messages.  I tried system-config-users again just
now and still see the same error message 
    The user database cannot be read.  This problem is most likely
    caused by a mismatch between /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
    or /etc/group and /etc/gshadow.  The program will exit now.

Fedora apologizes that these issues have not been resolved yet. We're
sorry it's taken so long for your bug to be properly triaged and acted
on. We appreciate the time you took to report this issue and want to
make sure no important bugs slip through the cracks.

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This bug is open for a Fedora version that is no longer maintained and
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