Error in password file?

[Marvin Kosmal]

On 2/9/12, Rick Stevens <rstevens at corp.alldigital.com> wrote:
> On 02/09/2012 09:31 AM, Marvin Kosmal wrote:
>> On 2/9/12, Aaron Konstam<akonstam at sbcglobal.net>  wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2012-02-08 at 14:43 -0800, Marvin Kosmal wrote:
>>>> On 2/8/12, don fisher<hdf3 at comcast.net>  wrote:
>>>>> When I execute pwck to verify integrity of password files and received
>>>>> the following:
>>>>>
>>>>> sudo pwck
>>>>> user 'adm': directory '/var/adm' does not exist
>>>>> user 'uucp': directory '/var/spool/uucp' does not exist
>>>>> user 'gopher': directory '/var/gopher' does not exist
>>>>> user 'avahi-autoipd': directory '/var/lib/avahi-autoipd' does not exist
>>>>> user 'oprofile': directory '/home/oprofile' does not exist
>>>>> user 'saslauth': directory '/var/empty/saslauth' does not exist
>>>>> user 'pulse': directory '/var/run/pulse' does not exist
>>>>> invalid password file entry
>>>>>
>>>>> How should this be fixed?
>>>>>
>>>>> Don
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi
>>>>
>>>> I don't believe every user has a directory..
>>>>
>>>> I think you are  "Good to GO!"
>>>>
>>>> Marvin
>>>
>>> I don't know if you are good to go but when I run: sudo pwck
>>> on my machine except the last entry is:
>>> pwck: no changes
>>>
>>> instead of: invalid password file entry
>>>
>>> so that is the output that would worry me. It seems you have an invalid
>>> entry in the passwd file. It would be nice if the program gave you a
>>> hint which entry it is complaining about.
>>>
>>> --
>>> =======================================================================
>>> Of course you can't flap your arms and fly to the moon. After a while
>>> you'd run out of air to push against.
>>> =======================================================================
>>> Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam at sbcglobal.net
>>>
>>
>>
>> HI
>>
>> I gave my answer based on three boxes I have they yield similar
>> results.   Not all users will have a directory.
>>
>> I stand by my answer..
>
> Yes, users do NOT have to have a home directory (especially users that
> are primarily there as "owners" of daemons and such and have a shell
> of /sbin/nologin).
>
> The "invalid password file entry" error probably indicates a blank line
> at the end of either /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow, so that's the first
> place I'd look.  Try
>
> 	$ sudo vipw -p        (edits /etc/passwd safely)
> 	$ sudo vipw -s        (edits /etc/shadow safely)
>
> and check to make sure there aren't any blank lines in the files.  Not
> sure if pwck chokes on NIS-style entries (e.g. a username of "+")
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital    ricks at alldigital.com -
> - AIM/Skype: therps2        ICQ: 22643734            Yahoo: origrps2 -
> -                                                                    -
> -      On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd say...  oh, somewhere in there.     -
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>

Thanks for the come back..

I did the vipw -p and vipw -s and they all look identical  ..No blank lines..

TIA

Marvin