Useradd Cannot Lock etc passwd Try Again Later

ix Answers 9

If no .lock files are present but yous still cannot create a user try the following

                sudo mount -o remount,rw /                              

If logged in equally root then use

                mount -o remount,rw /                              

Jawa

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answered Oct three, 2022 at 7:22

4

• This solved the issue I had after booting into recovery mode past editing the grub entry

  Feb 1, 2022 at 8:xvi

• simply where shall i wait for the .lock files? thanks to @trevorRobinson information technology seems one should look in /etc/, correct?

  February 13, 2022 at thirteen:32

• What if it says mountain: cannot remount /dev/dm-0 read-write, is write-protected. I'grand in ChromeOS (Linux) with Dev Mode enabled.

  Apr 22, 2022 at 5:51

• Why isn't this the accepted answer??

  Jul xx, 2022 at 7:22

The user y'all are running the commands every bit lack the required privileges. Change to root user by issuing the control

              su -                          

or if you have/use sudo

              sudo <command to run>                          

answered Jun 13, 2011 at 7:18

inquaminquam

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If you have -R /some/chroot added to your useradd command, that might exist the problem.

I idea it meant that the user would be jailed upon login, but that'south non the example. Past looking at strace output, I saw useradd chrooted into the specified directory, afterwards which of course it cannot find /etc/passwd anymore. Then I'm not sure what the option is for, just there'south your (well, my) problem.

answered Jun 17, 2022 at 20:17

LucLuc

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two

• This was exactly what I was trying. After removing the -R [dir] option I was able to create the user.

  October 11, 2022 at eighteen:55

• Nice guess! Cheers. I as well understood that the chroot for useradd is not what you think it is :) It just uses the specified dir as a root for the user's organization. Information technology's useful for cloned isolated sub-OS, which is rarely what you desire...

  Sep 7, 2022 at xiii:45

That's considering you don't have permissions for those operations

• You lot can't read /etc/shadow
• You can't straight alter /etc/passwd

You can modify both files through specialized commands (e.yard you tin change your password).

answered Jun thirteen, 2011 at 7:16

1

• to alter password, use " passwd <username> "

  Jun 13, 2011 at seven:21

I ran into this when a disk error occurred during a userdel operation and the system had to exist rebooted. I needed to delete all 4 of the post-obit files to proceed:

              sudo rm /etc/passwd.lock sudo rm /etc/shadow.lock sudo rm /etc/group.lock sudo rm /etc/gshadow.lock                          

answered Aug ii, 2012 at 21:xx

This tin can besides be caused past running out of space on the root filesystem. Utilize strace to exist certain. strace is your friend.

answered January 28, 2012 at 22:12

Robin GreenRobin Green

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2

• I've been reading many threads with my trouble and that was actually the solution. Should be ane of the showtime things to check when having any filesystem issues, I guess. I'm using df instead of strace though. How would strace help me? Never used information technology

  Apr xiv, 2022 at x:xi

• Well, if y'all already guessed that the problem might exist running out of space, then df tin can help. But strace will tell y'all what the error code was when information technology tried to lock the file, so it should remove the guesswork. The mode I usually call strace is strace -f -e trace=file control since this usually gives the most useful results.

  Apr 14, 2022 at 11:03

A demo of this error on Ubuntu 14.04:

              user@mybox:/home$ sudo useradd eric user@mybox:/dwelling house$ userdel eric userdel: Permission denied. userdel: cannot lock /etc/passwd; endeavour again later.                          

sudo gives you the permission to lock information technology.

              user@mybox:/dwelling$ sudo userdel eric user@mybox:/home$                          

answered Sep 17, 2022 at 20:45

Eric LeschinskiEric Leschinski

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answered May nineteen, 2022 at 23:45

Had aforementioned issue, since /etc was full. This is why /etc/passwd could not be written. Make sure that you accept plenty space on /etc, if not then enlarge it or make clean unnecessary stuff.

answered Jan 3, 2022 at 15:39

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Source: https://superuser.com/questions/296373/cannot-lock-etc-passwd-try-again-later

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