User Accounts Dissappear

Help! (Home for newbies)
1

I do not find myself to be a newbie to anything other than Virtualmin/Webmin so I began by posting in this group area.

I have been testing the Webmin/Virtualmin now for a couple of months. Have three domains on the new server during this test that worked flawlessly. I just began this weekend pulling the trigger and moving sites over to this new server when I noticed a new oddity.

If I go to the Virtualmin control panel and select a domain and then click the Edit Mail and FTP Users link, it displays the users I had previously created. If I add a new user, either Email or FTP type, the user will initially show on the list but If I try to user the newly created user, I get access denied messages like the user does not exist. If I return to the User list page, the user account I just created is now gone.

This problem behavior exhibits itself on newly created domain accounts and existing domain accounts. It also happens on domain accounts that already have users created previously and on domain account where there is only the primary account. Existing user accounts do not seem to be affected but I have not tried modifing an existing account for fear the user account will go into this missing status.

One last thing to note, if I open a domain account and then click on any other user account, like I was going to edit their properties, and the simply click the Return to User List link, the libo user account will appear in the list again. From here I can seemingly delete this user and everything seems fine.

From /var/log/messages

Nov 8 20:31:56 svr005 proftpd[22686]: svr005.xyzdomain.net (::ffff:99.168.98.201[::ffff:99.168.98.201]) - FTP session opened.
Nov 8 20:31:58 svr005 proftpd[22686]: svr005.xyzdomain.net (::ffff:99.168.98.201[::ffff:99.168.98.201]) - PAM(tester.mydomain): Authentication failure.

The only thing that has changed on this server is we have added 4GB RAM because it was doing a lot of swapping with only 1GB. I am not certain this has anything to do with it but I have learned to give as much detail as possible when asking for help…

Thank you in advance for any assistance you might be able to throw my way on this issue. If there are any details I have left out, please let me know and I will answer quickly…

Thanks,
-greg<br><br>Post edited by: GeekPatrolMiller, at: 2008/11/08 16:38

2

I just tested a second server, which was also working fine last weekend, but it is exhibiting the same problem. Possibly an update within the past 7 days that could be the culprit?

Box one:
System hostname svr005.mydomain.net
Operating system CentOS Linux 5.2
Webmin version 1.441
Virtualmin version 3.63.gpl (GPL)
Theme version 6.4
Time on server 08/Nov/2008 21:35
Kernel and CPU Linux 2.6.18-92.1.10.el5 on i686
CPU load averages 0.02 (1 min) 0.05 (5 mins) 0.07 (15 mins)
Running processes 169
Real memory 3.65 GB total, 476.76 MB used

Virtual memory 1.94 GB total, 0 bytes used

Local disk space 262.52 GB total, 23.51 GB used

Package updates All Virtualmin packages are up to date.

Virtual servers 50 DNS domains 50
Virtual websites 50 SSL websites 0
Mail domains 46 Databases 38
Mail/FTP users 60 Mail aliases 157

Box two:
System hostname svr004.mydomain.net
Operating system CentOS Linux 5.2
Webmin version 1.441
Virtualmin version 3.63.gpl (GPL)
Theme version 6.4
Time on server 08/Nov/2008 21:33
Kernel and CPU Linux 2.6.18-92.1.13.el5 on i686
CPU load averages 0.12 (1 min) 0.14 (5 mins) 0.11 (15 mins)
Running processes 139
Real memory 1.98 GB total, 212.70 MB used

Virtual memory 1.94 GB total, 44 kB used

Local disk space 142.31 GB total, 11.57 GB used

Package updates All Virtualmin packages are up to date.

Virtual servers 33 DNS domains 33
Virtual websites 33 SSL websites 0
Mail domains 32 Databases 17
Mail/FTP users 62 Mail aliases 80

Anyone? Ideas?<br><br>Post edited by: GeekPatrolMiller, at: 2008/11/08 17:37

3

No idea. Are you using LDAP or any alternate user storage mechanism? Is nscd running?

If it’s reproducible on a brand new system, I’d recommend filing a bug about it.

4

Neither LDAP nor NSCD are running on either system. Both systems were loaded as bare as possible to allow Webmin install and configure the desired components.

Are there any log files to review for errors conditions or any debugging mechanisms I could try out. Like I mentioned, I am new to Webmin/Virtualmin.

Thanks,
-greg

5

There are logs for Webmin in /var/webmin/miniserv.log and there is a way to also enable more comprehensive logging, in the Webmin Configuration module under "Debugging Log File".

Again, I’d suggest filing a bug, if the behavior is reproduce-able.