Owner and group of files not related to users/group in the system.

[mar_q]

It happened to me that some files in the system had owner and group numerical. Althought I read about it some time ago I can't find explanation anymore. Could you explain me what is it?

[Dennis Handly]

If there are no entries in /etc/passwd or /etc/group for the UID/GID, then numbers are displayed.

It can also show up if you are using NIS and the demon needs restarting:

/sbin/init.d/nis.client stop

/sbin/init.d/nis.client start

[Ismail Azad]

Hey,

This is something I learned from my guru.  Well, if you see numerical values for owners in the ll output it corresponds to those users who are no longer defined on the system. A specific user could create a directory or a file somewhere in the file system tree space ... Lets say /tmp and for some reason or the other the system administrator removes the account with userdel.

Now, what happens to the files created by that user in /tmp. This will be in the form of a numerical value as the system no longer has a record of the user but the user wandered out into the filesystem space when he/she existed as a defined account. Sometimes it is good to use the /- nousers option with find, to find such users and possibly list or delete them depending on what is required.

Regards

Ismail Azad