Cannot obtain lock for /etc/ptmp

[Mike King_7]

When I attempt to change a passwdord via passwd or vipw I get the errors:

lockf: Lockf deadlock detection
vipw: Cannot obtain lock for /etc/ptmp

There is no file /etc/ptmp.
When I touch this file and then try a vipw I get:

lckpwdf: No such file or directory
vipw: Cannot obtain lock for /etc/.pwd.lock

There is no file /etc/.pwd.lock
If I then touch that file and try vipw again I get:
vipw: temporary file busy; try again later

Right now no one can change passwords. What can I try?

[Peter Godron]

Mike,
have you tested with lsof as it suggest in this thread:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=84458

What were your results ?

Did this answer fix the problem ?

[Coolmar]

I found this in the newsgroups:

The system wide lock table is full - it holds about 200 locks by
default; but you can up its size by changing the HP-UX kernel configurable
parameter 'nflocks'.
Your table could be too small for the number of processes running that
need to use file locks. Or a single process could be misbehaving; by
grabbing all available locks ... I've seen a buggy version of the HP
network lock daemon cause this problem


What version of HP-UX are you running?

[Mike King_7]

Peter-- I ran lsof and no processes had the passwd file open.

Coolmar-- I am running Hp-UX v11.

Note-- the problem went away yesterday afternoon, but it is back again now.