[[!meta title="Known bugs of nscd with LDAP"]]

As [[stated some time ago|debian-with-ldap-forgets-users]],
I had the problem that users vanished after some time.

As I get a lot of e-mails regarding this problem, I therefore
documentate here the details I've found out so far:

## Ncsd works unreliable

    Yes, indeed, switching off nscd removes the problem.

But there are more problems I experienced with nscd:

 * Sometimes it consumes 100% cpu (and does not stop that until being killed)
 * Sometimes it just crashes.
 * Sometimes it causes users to "vanish" (the original problem)
 * Sometimes it hangs and thus slows down the whole system

## The alternatives

In D-INFK department in the ETH we're heavily dependent on the
LDAP database, as most services are using it as its primary
database. To overcome the problem, there are several solutions:

 * Dump the ldap database into standard /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
 * Shutdown nscd and let the LDAP-Server handle the load
 * Install [unscd](http://busybox.net/~vda/unscd/)

I'm going for the last one now.

[[!tag eth unix]]