Public bug reported:
Binary package hint: apt
I've changed the username after installing the system a long time ago,
and the /etc/group file referred to both the old username (non-existent)
and the new username.
This worked for months until I upgraded to Ubuntu Lucid Lynx - the
upgrade failed because the new apt package couldn't be configured (the
dpkg --configure apt step also failed when ran manually). Short
investigation using strace -f showed that the problem was related to the
old username triggering an error condition. Running apt.postinst script
manually didn't cause any error though and exited with exit code 0.
The deleted username is krzysiek, the new username is kfoltman. The
incorrect username was mentioned BEFORE the correct username in each
relevant line of /etc/group. Like this:
adm:x:4:krzysiek,kfoltman
This is the possibly relevant fragment of the output of strace -f
[pid 5474] getcwd("/var/lib/dpkg/info", 4096) = 19
[pid 5474] setreuid(4294967295, 0) = 0
[pid 5474] setuid(0) = 0
[pid 5474] setregid(4294967295, 0) = 0
[pid 5474] lstat("/etc/sudoers", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0440, st_size=557, ...}) = 0
[pid 5474] setregid(4294967295, 0) = 0
[pid 5474] setreuid(0, 1) = 0
[pid 5474] open("/etc/sudoers", O_RDONLY) = 5
[pid 5474] fstat(5, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0440, st_size=557, ...}) = 0
[pid 5474] mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS,
-1, 0) = 0x7ff06419d000
[pid 5474] read(5, "# /etc/sudoers\n#\n# This file MUS"..., 4096) = 557
[pid 5474] lseek(5, 0, SEEK_SET) = 0
[pid 5474] fcntl(5, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0
[pid 5474] setreuid(4294967295, 0) = 0
[pid 5474] setuid(0) = 0
[pid 5474] setregid(4294967295, 0) = 0
[pid 5474] ioctl(5, SNDCTL_TMR_TIMEBASE or TCGETS, 0x7fff76b4b1d0) = -1 ENOTTY
(Inappropriate ioctl for device)
[pid 5474] read(5, "# /etc/sudoers\n#\n# This file MUS"..., 8192) = 557
[pid 5474] read(5, "", 4096) = 0
[pid 5474] read(5, "", 8192) = 0
[pid 5474] ioctl(5, SNDCTL_TMR_TIMEBASE or TCGETS, 0x7fff76b4b1d0) = -1 ENOTTY
(Inappropriate ioctl for device)
[pid 5474] open("/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 6
[pid 5474] lseek(6, 0, SEEK_CUR) = 0
[pid 5474] fstat(6, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1782, ...}) = 0
[pid 5474] mmap(NULL, 1782, PROT_READ, MAP_SHARED, 6, 0) = 0x7ff06419c000
[pid 5474] lseek(6, 1782, SEEK_SET) = 1782
[pid 5474] fstat(6, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1782, ...}) = 0
[pid 5474] munmap(0x7ff06419c000, 1782) = 0
[pid 5474] close(6) = 0
[pid 5474] write(2, "sudo", 4) = 4
[pid 5474] write(2, ": ", 2) = 2
[pid 5474] write(2, "unknown user: krzysiek", 22) = 22
[pid 5474] write(2, "\n", 1) = 1
[pid 5474] close(5) = 0
Note that this message (unknown user: krzysiek) wasn't displayed
anywhere, so I had to use strace to find out why is it failing.
This might be an uncommon scenario (my system was misconfigured), but
still, everything else seemed to handle that error just fine. And the
error message being suppressed makes it hard to fix the problem. The
obvious attempts to remedy the problem (apt --reinstall install apt,
dpkg --configure -a) also failed, as the error wasn't related to order
of configuration steps.
** Affects: apt (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
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apt package configure step fails without explanation if non-existent user is
referenced in /etc/group
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/578216
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