password file busy - try again later.

Cause

On a SunOS system running NIS (YP), the user runs yppasswdd(1M)and the system reports this error. On the NIS Master server, this error is in the messages file from rpc.yppasswdd: password file busy - try again. This error is caused superficially by the existence of a lock file, /var/yp/passwd.ptmp. Removing this file allows yppasswdd to run to completion, but subsequent invocations still fail with the same error message. The root cause is that yppasswdd has the-m option, which says to run make to push the maps out to the slave servers. In this situation, a problem occurred in pushing the maps to a slave server; the push would hang. Thus, the push was never completed, and the lock file was never removed. This was tested by doing the following:

#cd /var/yp 
#make passwd 
passwd is up to date 
#touch passwd 
#make passwd

Action

To fix the root cause, find out why the map does not push. In this situation, it was a routing issue; however, the remedy could lie elsewhere.