Cannot lock group file: already locked

Question

I'm trying to add a group using this command:

groupadd somegroup

which returns:

Cannot lock group file: already locked.

I did some research and most of the solutions require removing a lock file in /etc, but I do not have root privilege. I used to be able to do this before, but at some point it stopped working.

My OS is SUSE.

My admin already added me to this group. In order to see it working though, I either have to logout and login or make this command work. I don't want to logout and login again, though, since I have a lot of applications running.

Answer 1

Using groupadd to add groups to the system requires root privileges.

Maybe you just need newgrp [newgroup]. This makes [newgroup] your primary group and adds the group to your group list (see cmd groups).

Of course, first your system administrator has to put you in [newgroup], but you don't have to logout and in.