ERROR: Cannot Update System files

[sethu]

Hi Solaris Gurus

I have a Solaris 7 system which I inherited. I want to delete some users and create new ones. But after login as root when I try to delete or add users I am getting this error.

UX: userdel: ERROR: Cannot update system files - login cannot be deleted.

OR

UX: useradd: ERROR: Cannot update system files - login cannot be created.

Can anybody help me on this?

--Sethu

 

[jad]

ok ... the users are in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow ...

the home directories are either in that file, or in /etc/auto_home

2 ways to work at this are:

1) open up 'admintool' as root and see if you can remove the entries
2) manually remove entries from the files and remove home directories.

i like the manual method, but then i'm a ludite!

 

[pmckeehan]

The command I use to remover users is:

userdel -r userid

If you still keep getting the "Cannot update system files" error message, check to see if the root partition is full. If it is, you will have to free up some space and then issue the userdel command again.

Hope this helps,
pmckeehan

 

[jad]

i hate userdel and useradd ... they seem too easy and i'm suspicious