numeric uid numbers display as file owner

[Scott Ransted]

I have an 11.0 system that is displaying all files as owned by the numberic uid of the owner. The permissions appear to be correct, so I'm not sure what else to check? (pwck doesn't return any errors either).

ll -d /
drwxr-xr-x 23 0 root 1024 Sep 12 08:57 /

ll -d /etc
dr-xr-xr-x 32 2 bin 8192 Oct 31 14:57 /etc

ll -d /etc/passwd
-r--r--r-- 1 0 sys 37176 Oct 31 13:06 /etc/passwd

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Scott:

Make sure that someone has not aliased the 'll' command.

# alias ll

...will return :

ll: shell alias not found.

...if not; otherwise, if I did:

# alias ll='ls -ln'

...then "alias ll" would return:

ll='ls -ln'

...and you would see the behavior you describe.

Regards!

...JRF...

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

I would kill the pwgrd daemon (it caches the uid and gid lookups) and see if the problem goes away. Stale pwgrd entries can cause exactly this problem. Also check to make sure that filesystems (especially /var) are not full. A full /var filesystem will also cause erratic pwgrd behavior. It's up to you whether or not you want to disable pwgrd; UNIX boxes ran just fine for decades w/o it and yours will too.

I also assume that your UID's are resolved locally and that you are not using NIS, NIS+, and/or LDAP.

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

I think that your /etc/group file may have disappeared for some reason.

From your listing, it appears that the owner is fine, but the group entry is what has disappeared. I simulated the same scenario by mv'ing my /etc/group file. Please verify that yours is still there.

Good luck

[Scott Ransted]

Thank you A. Clay! restarting the pwgrd daemon did the trick! FYI, the /var file system was full about an hour ago.

[Scott Ransted]

The answer that A. Clay provided resolved the problem.