Problem with freebsd-update corrupting /etc/passwd

Adam Vande More amvandemore at gmail.com
Thu Aug 20 23:34:59 UTC 2015


On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 5:56 PM, Paul Schmehl <pschmehl_lists at tx.rr.com>
wrote:

> --On August 20, 2015 at 3:01:09 PM -0500 Mark Felder <feld at FreeBSD.org>
> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>
> No.  The only two files I was prompted to edit were /etc/motd and
> /etc/newsyslog.conf.  /etc/password was displayed, but it appeared to be
> fine to me, so I responded yes to the merge.  All it did was add the
> unbound account.
>
> The top three lines of the file (that I renamed .bak because it was
> corrupted) are:
>
> # cat /etc/passwd.bak
> # $FreeBSD: releng/10.2/etc/master.passwd 256366 2013-10-12 06:08:18Z
> rpaulo $
> #
> root:*:0:0:Charlie &:/root:/bin/csh
>
> # pwd_mkdb -C /etc/passwd.bak
> pwd_mkdb: corrupted entry
> pwd_mkdb: at line #3
> pwd_mkdb: /etc/passwd.bak: Inappropriate file type or format
>
> I'd be happy to send the file to someone who could analyze it.
>

There is no need to analyze the file as line #3 is clearly incorrect.  The
question is how it got into that format.  Do you have a pre-upgrade
backup?

-- 
Adam


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