Problem with freebsd-update corrupting /etc/passwd

[Mark Felder]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2015, at 14:17, Paul Schmehl wrote:
> I just upgraded two servers from 8.4-RELEASE to 10.2-RELEASE.  On both 
> servers I had a problem with the /etc/passwd file after upgrade.
> 
> This is what I got on both servers:
> 
> # pwd_mkdb -C /etc/passwd
> pwd_mkdb: corrupted entry
> pwd_mkdb: at line #3
> pwd_mkdb: /etc/passwd: Inappropriate file type or format
> 
> On one server a single user "disappeared" (getent passwd username
> returned 
> nothing).  On the other server, after I replaced it with 
> /etc/masster.passwd, I looped through the /etc/passwd file and getent 
> returned each entry, so no users "disappeared".
> 
> Not sure what the problem might be, but I thought y'all should know.
> 

During the upgrade did it ask you to merge some config files (passwd
included) ? That's the only time it would do so. Corruption on line #3
makes me think it was trying to make you manually merge the FreeBSD ID /
timestamp at the top of the file.