Public bug reported:
This bug applies to both Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04, the two distros
I've checked.
This is likely a packaging error. The syslog user appears in
/etc/passwd as:
syslog:x:102:106::/home/syslog:/usr/sbin/nologin
Of course there is no directory /home/syslog. This appears innocuous,
but can cause problems for users that have, say autofs mounted home
directories. To cite one example, the python virtual envionment
anaconda trolls through /etc/passw looking for environments in
/home/USER. This triggers autofs to try and mount /home/syslog, which
doesn't existing, causing the automounter to hang under certain
circumstances. In, for example, Arch linux, this entry would appear as
the considerably more sensible
syslog:x:102:106::/:/usr/sbin/nologin
While an edge case in the current compute environment, this is also a
very easy fix. Don't reference non-existent directories. Many Ubuntu
packages make this packaging error when creating local users with non-
existent home directories; e.g. cups-pk-helper, which I'm filing a bug
report for next.
** Affects: rsyslog (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1898753
Title:
Non-existent home directory entry in /etc/passwd
Status in rsyslog package in Ubuntu:
New
Bug description:
This bug applies to both Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04, the two
distros I've checked.
This is likely a packaging error. The syslog user appears in
/etc/passwd as:
syslog:x:102:106::/home/syslog:/usr/sbin/nologin
Of course there is no directory /home/syslog. This appears innocuous,
but can cause problems for users that have, say autofs mounted home
directories. To cite one example, the python virtual envionment
anaconda trolls through /etc/passw looking for environments in
/home/USER. This triggers autofs to try and mount /home/syslog, which
doesn't existing, causing the automounter to hang under certain
circumstances. In, for example, Arch linux, this entry would appear
as the considerably more sensible
syslog:x:102:106::/:/usr/sbin/nologin
While an edge case in the current compute environment, this is also a
very easy fix. Don't reference non-existent directories. Many Ubuntu
packages make this packaging error when creating local users with non-
existent home directories; e.g. cups-pk-helper, which I'm filing a bug
report for next.
To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rsyslog/+bug/1898753/+subscriptions
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