Owner and group ids on the entire system are showing numbers.

[John Goetz]

/etc/passwd and /etc/group have not changed and look ok. The owner and group for each file and directory match whats in /etc/passwd and /etc/group.

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Check permissions on the /etc/passwd and /etc/group files. Verify that they are either 644 or 444 permissions.

You might also have a look at your nsswitch.conf file. If you have passwd and group set to 'compat' then I think it may cause an issue like this.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom John

pwck
grpck

The normal cause of this is a problem in those files.

If you are running an ignite golden image, these files are temporarily messed with and this problem goes away after a short time.

SEP

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I'll assume that you are not using NIS or NIS+ and I'll also assume that this is not an NFS mount so that the UID's and GID's are actually valid.

I'll also assume that the mode (permissions) of both /etc/passwd and /etc/group are 444. (-r--r--r--).

1) Check to make sure that /var (/var/tmp if a separate filesystem) is not full.

2) cd /sbin/init.d
./pwgr stop

Now see if your UID's and GID's properly map via ls -l.

If all is well the the passwd/group caching daemon (pwgrd) has become confused. This will only certainly happen if /var filled up so that if failed to write its temporary files. You can restart pwgrd via /sbin/init.d/pwgr start or you can edit the config file in /etc/rc.config.d/ so that this daemon does not start. UNIX boxes ran for many years w/o this "luxury" and yours will work just fine w/o it as well.

[John Goetz]

pwck came back with 2 entries. Removed them and my owner is ok now.

[John Goetz]

grpck came back with nothing. When I try to do a chgrp sys /etc/passwd it comes back with chgrp: unknown group: sys

[John Goetz]

./pwgr stop did the trick.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I'll bet almost anything that /var filled up even if only momentarily. You should be able to safely restart pwgrd although again this daemon is really not necessary but unless you edit the config file, it will restart automatically upon the next boot.

[John Goetz]

You guys are awesome as usual.