Note: This bug is displayed in read-only format because the product is no longer active in Red Hat Bugzilla.

Bug 1979

Summary:	(not nc, nscd!) nscd not PAM passwd format compliant
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Raw Hide	Reporter:	Jay Freeman <saurik>
Component:	nc	Assignee:	Bill Nottingham <notting>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	1.0	CC:	rvokal
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1999-04-06 00:03:00 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Jay Freeman 1999-04-04 08:12:57 UTC

I found out a while ago that PAM/shadow allows for blank
lines and comments inside of the /etc/passwd file, and have
been using that to organize my users.  Earlier today, I ran
a program (eggdrop 1.3.23) using su -c, and the console
froze, and nscd logged these errors to the syslog (some
multiple times):

Apr  3 14:18:15 ironclad nscd: 326: short write in
cache_addhst: Broken pipe
Apr  3 14:18:15 ironclad nscd: 326: cannot write result:
Broken pipe
Apr  3 14:18:15 ironclad nscd: 326: short write in
cache_addpw: Broken pipe

:and then refused to serve anymore passwd lookups, keeping
me from logging into the computer (and making any ls -l or
ps process hang and need to be stopped with ctrl-c).  I was
forced to reboot each time (although one time I had another
console open that I was able to use to kill all the nscd
processes which fixed it).  I propose that nscd not be
defaulted to starting at startup during the installation
program so that users have to make a concious effort to deem
it neccessary to use the daemon.

BTW, nscd should be added to the component menu for
bugzilla.

Comment 1 Cristian Gafton 1999-04-06 00:03:59 UTC

empty lines in the passwd file are ILLEGAL. This is not supposed to be
a supported feature.

I do agree that starting nscd by default is unnecessary, so I changed
that in the current glibc rpms.