Seminary password changes have been fraught with problems for a while now. And resetpass on SHANTI seems to hang, using up all the ptys periodically. These seem to be related.
Apparently, when password changes happen for people with active seminary accounts, something over on Bathsheba’s resetpass script seems to keep a file handle or some such open. This only happens for seminary users, though. But it does happen for both password changes (WebDB or SquirrelMail) and for admin password resets. The problem arises with changes, though, since the ordering of events means that ECS Samba domain password changes happen after seminary changes (and everything else) in password changes but before everything except SHANTI local changes in resets. In fact, Seminary changes happen last in resets.
So, when an active seminary account gets changed, something over there happens differently, keeping the SHANTI resetpass from completing - thus not getting to the ECS Samba change if it’s a “change” and keeping a pty open on SHANTI regardless. After a month or so, the ptys get used up and ssh logins fail. And then we kill off all the resetpasses and smbds that are associated with that. But seminary users’ Samba passwords are still messed up.
I’ve asked Zach to look into his resetpass script to see what file handles it might be keeping open for seminary users. Maybe we’ll have this nailed soon.
Posted by Rowan Littell at February 5, 2004 09:59 AM