file owner is number not name

[Neil Truby]

Hi

Following 11i upgrade i merged the 11:00 passwd and group files with the new 11:11 files (there are no duplicates). Now i get UID as number and not a name?

any pointers please

[Charles Harris]

Hi,

This usually happens when you've got both duplicate uid / group id's or you have references to group id's in the passwd file that don't exist in the groups file and vise versa.

Hope this is of some use!


Cheers,

-ChaZ-

[T G Manikandan]

check your /etc/passwd file.
1.check the permissions of the /etc/passwd file

Make sure that the permissions are r--r--r--

2.check the permissions of the /usr file system.
dr-xr-xr-x bin bin /usr
dr-xr-xr-x bin bin /usr/bin


I think there is no user associated with that UID number in the password file.

Map that UID for that appropriate user in the /etc/passwd file.




Thanks

[Peter Kloetgen]

Hi Neil,

this normally happens if you delete a user, or change UID of a user. Also it is possible that you have a corrupted /etc/passwd file.

Run the following command:

pwck

Allways stay on the bright side of life!

Peter

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi
This means there is no user in the passwd file (or in NIS) with this number. If it is passwd and group file change owner to root:sys.

[V. V. Ravi Kumar_1]

hi,

u are saying merged, is this true for all the files or some of the files.

regds

[V. V. Ravi Kumar_1]

hi,

u are saying merged, is UID showing the number for all the files or some of the files.

regds

[Daimian Woznick]

Assuming this is not a permission problem on the passwd file itself, you could go back to the old passwd files that you merged to determine which user should own the file. Then just do a chmod on the files to that account name.

As a note, you should periodically check your file systems for files that do not have owners associated with them. You can do this with the following command:

find / -nouser -exec ls -ald {} \;

The items found could either be regular cleanup or a possible attacker was on the system and missed some cleanup.

[Neil Truby]

hi

thanks for your suggestions, problem was solved by removing a blank line form /etc/passwd file


cheers
Martin

[Bill Hassell]

A good command to use after editing the passwd file: pwck (and grpck)

All files have numbers for users and groups. The ll command decodes these numbers by searching through the passwd file to associate the number with a user ID (same for group file). If no match, then the number is shown.