Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 132637
RHEL3: update to FreeWnn-1.11-36.3 fails when wnn group exists
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:07:04 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4.3) Gecko/20040803 Description of problem: Updating to FreeWnn-1.11-36.3 does not work since although the user wnn does not exist, the group wnn is there. Therefor, when trying to update to FreeWnn-1.11-36.3, the the preinstall script fails with useradd: group wnn exists - if you want to add this user to that group, use -g. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): FreeWnn-1.11-36.3 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. rpm -Uvh FreeWnn-1.11-36.3.i386.rpm Additional info:
What version of FreeWnn did you have before? And did you try updating via RHN? You might want to contact support about this problem - if you have an up-to-date entitlement - by going to http://www.redhat.com/support or calling 800-REDHAT1.
I believe I had 1.11-36, and yes, I updated via RHN. For me, I solved the problem. I just wanted you to know there might be an issue with the preinstall script.
Ah, ok. Thanks for letting us know!
It is quite strange though since for me (fc3t3pre at least) deluser wnn removes the wnn group too, so I don't see how this could happen. David, is it possible you could try again: ie downgrade FreeWnn and then upgrade to see if the problem is reproducible? :)
I encountered the same problem. In my environment, the group wnn exists in NIS. After I temporarily removed `nis' for group from nsswitch.conf, `up2date FreeWnn' succeeded.
Thanks for that valuable information. David, are you using nis too?
Yes, I am running NIS, but the group wnn is specified in the local /etc/group file. Anyway, here is a slightly more structured rundown of the situation... To start with, I have not FreeWnn installed, but my /etc/group contains an entry wnn:x:49: This is the case on all my 60 kickstart-installed RHEL3 servers, so I dont't find it likeley that it has been added manually. If I just try to install FreeWnn-1.11-36, I get an error from the pre-install script, about the group already existing. So I remove this group manually and then install FreeWnn-1.11-36. Now the entry wnn:x:2028: have been created in /etc/group Then I update to FreeWnn-1.11-36.3 and now it works and I get the entry wnn:x:203: So if just the preinstall and uninstall scripts would be modified to handle the case of the group already existing, I think it would solve the problem (-.
Was FreeWnn installed at some point in the past incidently? If you "userdel wnn" does the wnn group remain on your boxes?
Yes, we have "Unsupported Development Libraries" as part of our kickstart, so it is FreeWnn is installed initially. And userdel wnn will remove the group wnn. However the group was still there after I did rpm -e FreeWnn
*** Bug 136551 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***