From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030516 Mozilla Firebird/0.6 Description of problem: Error message "user database can not be read" doesn't give useful information. The problem turned out to be a mismatch between passwd and shadow. Perhaps, the message could reflect that. I ended up searching thru google and redhat for that message. Since I got a hit on redhat, I wasn't the first to wonder down that path. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.delete or add a line from either passwd or shadow 2. 3. Expected Results: Mismatch on number of entries for shadow and passwd. Correct and restart. Additional info:
I have changed the text to read: "The user database cannot be read. This problem is most likely caused by a mismatch in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow. The program will exit now." I hope that helps clarify the problem. Should be fixed in redhat-config-users-1.1.16-1.