Failed to find user "" in passwd file

[Michael Allmer]

I am doing some house cleaning after a reboot of our server.
In the /var/adm/rc.log file I found the following;

VxVM INFO V-5-2-3360 VxVM device node check
Output from "/sbin/rc1.d/S091vxvm-nodes-check start":
----------------------------
insf: Failed to find user bin in passwd file; using uid 2 instead.
insf: Failed to find user root in passwd file; using current uid (0) instead.
insf: Failed to find user bin in passwd file; using uid 2 instead.
insf: Failed to find user root in passwd file; using current uid (0) instead.


The entries for 'root' and 'bin' are in the password file.

Any suggestions?

[Patrick Wallek]

Run a 'pwck' and verify that your /etc/passwd file is valid.

It is very easy to mess up the file when editing it manually.

[Michael Allmer]

I ran "pwck" as suggested. It do not find any issues with 'root' or 'bin' accounts.

[Bill Hassell]

What does this command return?

grep -e ^root -e ^bin /etc/passwd

Is this a Trusted system (hint: there is a directory called /tcb)? Do you see the bin and root files in /tcb/files/auth/b and /tcb/files/auth/r?

Is the /etc/passwd file stored on another filesystem using a symlink (very bad idea)?

[Michael Allmer]

The command returned the following;
root:erI9jxYwQr4Gg:0:3::/:/sbin/sh
bin:*:2:2::/usr/bin:/sbin/sh

No this is not a trusted system.

The password file is stored in the standay location, no symbolic links.

[Avinash20]

If the password file you are using is /etc/passwd, pwck passes successfully, then you could try to run the script again and check

/sbin/rc1.d/S091vxvm-nodes-check start

[Michael Allmer]

the command: sbin/rc1.d/S091vxvm-nodes-check start

Ran succesfully. So it is only during system startup that this occurs.

[Avinash20]

Dont think so.. Have you done any changes after the system came up !!

Could you again check by rebooting, if the server is not under production !!

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

When the root file system gets full some releases of HP-UX tend to hammer the passwd file.

Best if there are a lot of missing users to restore the file to another name and restore the missing users one by one.

SEP

[Mel Burslan]

is /etc/ a filesystem that requires mounting ? (another very bad idea, it should be a directory off the root filesystem at "/")

[Michael Allmer]

/etc is not a mounted file system it is part of "/"

the "/" root file system is not full, it stand at 55% currently.

No this s a production server so I will not be able to preform a unscheduled reboot. Durning the quaterly maintenance, I did a second reboot with the same results.
The following startup script also get the error about not find "root" and "bin" in the password file.
"/sbin/rc2.d/S400nfs.core start"

Nothing was changed to the server after bootup, other then a license manger was started manually.

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

Could it be that the script /sbin/rc1.d/S091vxvm-nodes-check uses a command that's not available ?
For instance something in /usr ?
It will be run quite early in the runlevel 1, before the localmount. In our case localmount is S100localmount, so S091vxvm-nodes-check would be run before /usr is mounted !

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

Oops, hadn't seen the nfs script entry in the log...

Could it be that you have a strange PATH environment variable when booting the system, resulting in the usage of commands outside /sbin ? Or changed something in PAM ?

[Michael Allmer]

Elmar,

I am not sure what you mean by PAM. the cobwebs in my head are not breaking free. ;-)

[Dennis Handly]

>I am not sure what you mean by PAM?

Pluggable Authentication Modules. Security checking for passwords, etc.

[Michael Allmer]

Dennis,

Thank you for the reminder.