In this article, we will look at an error message which appears when i am trying to add a user and how to correct it.
Error Message
[root@ngelinux01 ~]# useradd testuser Jul 05 09:05:22 rhel7 useradd[12345]: cannot open login definitions /etc/login.defs [No such file or directory]
Solution
1. As the error message say, try to check if this file exists on the system.
[root@ngelinux01 ~]# ls -l /etc/login.defs ls: cannot access /root/login.defs: No such file or directory [root@ngelinux01 ~]#
2. If not, then copy it from some working server and it should add new users now.
Make sure to check permissions are 644, however that usually does not matter for root.
[root@ngelinux01 ~]# ls -l /etc/login.defs -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 2028 Nov 4 2016 /etc/login.defs ### Below are the file contents for reference. [root@ngelinux01 ~]# cat /etc/login.defs # # Please note that the parameters in this configuration file control the # behavior of the tools from the shadow-utils component. None of these # tools uses the PAM mechanism, and the utilities that use PAM (such as the # passwd command) should therefore be configured elsewhere. Refer to # /etc/pam.d/system-auth for more information. # # *REQUIRED* # Directory where mailboxes reside, _or_ name of file, relative to the # home directory. If you _do_ define both, MAIL_DIR takes precedence. # QMAIL_DIR is for Qmail # #QMAIL_DIR Maildir MAIL_DIR /var/spool/mail #MAIL_FILE .mail # Password aging controls: # # PASS_MAX_DAYS Maximum number of days a password may be used. # PASS_MIN_DAYS Minimum number of days allowed between password changes. # PASS_MIN_LEN Minimum acceptable password length. # PASS_WARN_AGE Number of days warning given before a password expires. # PASS_MAX_DAYS 99999 PASS_MIN_DAYS 0 PASS_MIN_LEN 5 PASS_WARN_AGE 7 # # Min/max values for automatic uid selection in useradd # UID_MIN 1000 UID_MAX 60000 # System accounts SYS_UID_MIN 201 SYS_UID_MAX 999 # # Min/max values for automatic gid selection in groupadd # GID_MIN 1000 GID_MAX 60000 # System accounts SYS_GID_MIN 201 SYS_GID_MAX 999 # # If defined, this command is run when removing a user. # It should remove any at/cron/print jobs etc. owned by # the user to be removed (passed as the first argument). # #USERDEL_CMD /usr/sbin/userdel_local # # If useradd should create home directories for users by default # On RH systems, we do. This option is overridden with the -m flag on # useradd command line. # CREATE_HOME yes # The permission mask is initialized to this value. If not specified, # the permission mask will be initialized to 022. UMASK 077 # This enables userdel to remove user groups if no members exist. # USERGROUPS_ENAB yes # Use SHA512 to encrypt password. ENCRYPT_METHOD SHA512 [root@ngelinux01 ~]#
3. Now try to add the user again and it will be added without any error.
[root@ngelinux01 ~]# useradd testuser [root@ngelinux01 ~]#