From GarrettHoneycutt

Notes

This software is buggy and under load will crash fairly often. But as a linux user, this is what we've got.

invalidate a table

# nscd -i [database]

databases:

• passwd
• group
• hosts

typical usage

You add a user/group to some directory service, log in to the machine and see that the user/group does not exist

$ getent passwd <username>

$ getent group <groupname>

so then you invalidate the cache and try again. Voila... or not and go check out your directory service.