Yast does not open user and Group Management–what can I do?

SUSE Product Topics SLES Configure-Administer
1

Hello,
I have a server with SLES 11.
Yast worked so far well. It is still working, as I can open the YaST control center.
Just when I pick on the left pane of the yast menu:

Security and Users

and then in the right pane

User and Group Management

very shortly the Window

YaST2 - users @ servername

opens. It runs through all the points and makes its x in front:

x Read the default login settings x Read the default system settings x Read the configuration type x Read the user custom settings x Read users and groups => Build the cache structures
Then underneath:

Building the cache structures ... 100%
But then rather than that the User and Group module in Yast opens, I am returned to the
YaST2 Control Center (where I started out).

What is happening here? Everything else in yast works.
Do I need to reinstall YaST? Which packages?
Can I somehow create a log file when I try to open user and group management?
But yast does not bring an error message, but just refuses to open user and group management.
I am logged in as root.
Does yast need a server certificate for Users and Group management?
Would anyone have an idea?

Thank you.

2

Hi AndiMzD,

[QUOTE=AndiMzD;15713]Hello,
I have a server with SLES 11.
Yast worked so far well. It is still working, as I can open the YaST control center.
[…]
But then rather than that the User and Group module in Yast opens, I am returned to the
YaST2 Control Center (where I started out).

What is happening here? Everything else in yast works.
Do I need to reinstall YaST? Which packages?
Can I somehow create a log file when I try to open user and group management?
[/QUOTE]

the log file is already created - it’s even documented in the man page :wink: :

[QUOTE]:~ # man yast
[…]
FILES
/var/log/YaST2/*
Logs[/QUOTE]

I’d go for “/var/log/YaST2/y2log”.

As you already indicated, it’d be a good idea to first have a look at the logs before re-installing things. If you need help interpreting the content, let’s check out the messages together.

And no, usually no certificates or alike are needed to access those menus.

Regards,
Jens

3

[QUOTE]
the log file is already created - it’s even documented in the man page :wink: :

I’d go for “/var/log/YaST2/y2log”.

As you already indicated, it’d be a good idea to first have a look at the logs before re-installing things. If you need help interpreting the content, let’s check out the messages together.

And no, usually no certificates or alike are needed to access those menus.

Regards,
Jens[/QUOTE]

Hi Thank you for answering. I could solve it:
Yast does log everything in the background - thank you for the hint to the log file.
The following was relevant in the log file:

2013-09-06 14:01:20 <3> ltautol1(3699) [Interpreter] users/complex.ycp:398 Perl wanted to die: Can't locate YaPI/MailServer.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /y2update/modules

So I googeled for this:
Can’t locate YaPI/MailServer.pm
and found one interesting entry which I want to note here:
http://www.novell.com/support/kb/doc.php?id=7007717

Under Punkt 5 in this other forum entry it says:

5) Verify what package owns “MailServer.pm” on the working system with: rpm -qf /usr/share/YaST2/modules/YaPI/MailServer.pm
The result that they found then was:

yast2-mail-x.x.x.x-x

So I figured I leave out the x stuff and just search in YaST itself for this:
yast2-mail
and really, I found two packages:

[color=#0000FF]yast2-mail-plugins[/color]
and
[color=#0000FF]yast2-mail[/color].
Since only the plugin-packaged was installed and I correctly assumed, that the other listed package - which was not installed - was kind of the mother package on which the plugin package depended,
I just added it now and bang, the module
User and Group Management
worked again.
In the other forum entry that I linked in here they said that only the graphic modus of yast didn’t work but that the ncurses did. Yet on my server nothing worked, neither the ncurses yast and since the main user claimed that this was one of his main tools, the situation was prette tense.

Thanks again for having a look.
It is always nice and that’s why I take some effort to leave a well documented solution here and mark it as such.
So if ever someone else runs into it they can fix it real quick.

Regards

4

Hi AndiMzD,

[QUOTE=AndiMzD;15787]Thanks again for having a look.
It is always nice and that’s why I take some effort to leave a well documented solution here and mark it as such.
So if ever someone else runs into it they can fix it real quick.[/QUOTE]

this is very appreciated, thank you for giving that detailed response!

With regards,
Jens