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

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