ntpd as ntpd user question

[Herbert J. Skuhra]

On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 03:09:26PM -0700, bob prohaska wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 12:14:10PM -0600, Ian Lepore wrote:
> > 
> > I can't see any way that installkernel would lead to the complaint
> > about the ntpd user not existing; that check is tied to the
> > installworld target.
> > 
> My mistake. I was sleepy and in a hurry. The error message was in installworld
> and my attempt to adduser ntpd concluded with an error:
> Locked     : yes
> OK? (yes/no): yes
> pw: Bad id 'ntpd': invalid
> adduser: ERROR: There was an error adding user (ntpd).
> On reboot the old ntpd set the clock and I thought all was well.
> 
> The failure is a little surprising, is ntpd a reserved name?

Why? You obviously entered the string "ntpd" instead of an integer when
asked for the uid!?

> The machine is re-running buildworld/installworld from a clean start,
> so presumably it'll halt over the same error again. When that happens, 
> what's the simplest way to recover? Mergemaster is a big hammer, something
> less comprehensive might suffice, even manual editing of files.

In this case 'mergemaster -p' is enough.

-- 
Herbert