problems to install SSH & OPENSSH in Ubuntu 9.10

[Felipe Gaúcho]

I am trying to install & configure ssh & openssh-server, but I have
the following problem:


:~$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
openssh-server is already the newest version.
openssh-client is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up openssh-server (1:5.1p1-6ubuntu2) ...
useradd: cannot lock /etc/passwd; try again later.
adduser: `/usr/sbin/useradd -d /var/run/sshd -g nogroup -s
/usr/sbin/nologin -u 124 sshd' returned error code 1. Exiting.
dpkg: error processing openssh-server (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 openssh-server
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


any clue ?

------------------------------------------
   Felipe Gaúcho
   10+ Java Programmer
   CEJUG Senior Advisor