silly question about passwd failing

[Robert A. Earl]

In article <1262 at swbatl.sbc.com> gilstrap at swbatl.UUCP (Brian Gilstrap - UCI - 5-3929) writes:
>Okay, I should probably know this, but I'm not familiar with Xenix version
>2.2.3 to any real degree.  When anyone tries to change their password, the
>message "temporary file is busy; try again later" (or something very close to
>that) appears.

While I have not experienced this problem in Xenix, in NCR Unix (SVR2) this
indicates the presence of a lock-file in the /etc directory.  I don't recall
the name exactly, something like /etc/ptmp....we never did figure out why it
appeared on occasion...guess some program attempting to edit the passwd file
bombed and left it behind.  After removing the guilty file, passwd ran fine.

NOTE: with such an important file...it is a good bet to make a backup copy of
      file before deleting.
-- 
==============
Robert A. Earl
uunet!pds3!bob