getpwnam LDAP cache problem

[mandog]

We run Debian Sarge, our current account script:

1. Uses getpwnam to check if an account exists
2. If not, adds account info to LDAP
3. Uses getpwnam to get the $uid and $gid to chown mail spool

While the script is running, the second getpwnam fails. This behavior does not occur with file (/etc/passwd) based accounts.

The problem also occurs with User::pwent

If it turns out that this isn't a problem with my understanding, I can think of a few (ugly) ways to work around the problem. If it is a real problem, any thoughts on the best way to report the bug to the OpenLDAP (?) Pam (?) glibc (?) people would be helpful.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

getpwnam("test")
        or warn "account doesn't exist yet... (expected)";

# code to add LDAP account here brings out problem
# code to add to /etc/passwd account doesn't

getpwnam("test")
        or warn "shouldn't see this but we do\n $!";

(system("chown test.test /tmp/file")==0)
or warn "this also fails" 

# this works but is ugly
warn `getent passwd  | grep test`,"\n";

# $! eq 'No such file or directory'