[techtalk] groupadd/useradd difficulties

[gabriel gryffyn]

hi,

i just installed Mandrake 8.0, and am having some trouble with useradd, of 
all things.

the most obvious problem is that when i use groupadd, i get an error that 
says:  "error locking group file"  i get this same error when i use useradd 
-g and try to specify a group.

in what might be a related problem (or might not be--i don't know) i can't 
get apache to correctly serve documents out of new user's home 
directories.  the two users i added during the mandrake install process can 
have public_html directories and everything works fine.  but the users i've 
added with useradd after install generate a 403 forbidden error.  (the 
problem here isn't with the file/directory permission--i know those are 
right.  i'm pretty sure it isn't a problem with my apache configuration, 
since i'm using a very similar httpd.conf as a previous install, and apache 
serves fine from the home directories of people who were added to the 
system during install.  which is what leads me to believe it might be a 
problem with the way useradd is adding people to the system.)

i thought useradd and groupadd were very simple programs, but now that i'm 
getting weird errors, i'm beginning to wonder.  has anyone had any similar 
trouble, or have any insights into how i might fix this?  any help at all 
would be much appreciated!

thanks,
gabriel