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#1 2014-04-23 09:31:54

Juszr
Member
Registered: 2013-03-12
Posts: 87

Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

I noticed during boot of this:

# systemctl status -l shadow
● shadow.service - Verify integrity of password and group files
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/shadow.service; static)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2014-04-23 12:28:32 IDT; 2s ago
  Process: 1017 ExecStart=/usr/bin/pwck -r (code=exited, status=2)
 Main PID: 1017 (code=exited, status=2)

Apr 23 12:28:32 Host pwck[1017]: user 'mysql': directory '/home/mysql' does not exist
Apr 23 12:28:32 Host pwck[1017]: pwck: no changes
Apr 23 12:28:32 Host systemd[1]: shadow.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT
Apr 23 12:28:32 Host systemd[1]: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.
Apr 23 12:28:32 Host systemd[1]: Unit shadow.service entered failed state.

How can i fix it?

Last edited by Juszr (2014-04-23 09:32:09)

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#2 2014-04-23 09:40:27

Jeroen)Mathon
Member
From: Netherlands
Registered: 2013-08-29
Posts: 82

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

How do you edit your passwords and groups do you use the gpasswd and passwd command or do you edit the file directly?

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#3 2014-04-23 20:20:46

bpeary
Member
Registered: 2012-08-25
Posts: 40

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

[Solved] -- thanks hokasch

I too am newly receiving this message, and have made no changes to users, groups, or passwords for at least a year.

shadow.service - Verify integrity of password and group files
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/shadow.service; static)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2014-04-23 16:01:13 EDT; 7min ago
  Process: 300 ExecStart=/usr/bin/pwck -r (code=exited, status=2)
 Main PID: 300 (code=exited, status=2)

Apr 23 16:01:13 arch pwck[300]: user 'avahi': no group 84
Apr 23 16:01:13 arch pwck[300]: user 'ntp': no group 87
Apr 23 16:01:13 arch pwck[300]: pwck: no changes
Apr 23 16:01:13 arch systemd[1]: shadow.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT
Apr 23 16:01:13 arch systemd[1]: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.
Apr 23 16:01:13 arch systemd[1]: Unit shadow.service entered failed state.

Is it simply a matter of adding these to /etc/group?

Last edited by bpeary (2014-04-23 22:47:30)

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#4 2014-04-23 20:37:56

berbae
Member
From: France
Registered: 2007-02-12
Posts: 1,302

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

Re-installing the packages causing the check errors should correct the problems by creating the missing users and groups.
For mysql it is mariadb.

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#5 2014-04-23 20:38:39

hokasch
Member
Registered: 2007-09-23
Posts: 1,461

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

Juszr - the message is pretty clear, no? If you want to use mysql with the db in /home/mysql, fix the user/home dir, if you do not then just delete the user. mariadb package puts it in /var/lib/mysql

bpeary - shadow service is new, that is why you are receiving that message only now. simply reinstalling ntp & avahi should be the easiest way to fix it.

AFAIK the only way arch packages would make shadow. service fail was this:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 2#p1171272

Don't overwrite your group file with a .pacnew one without merging them.

Last edited by hokasch (2014-04-24 00:03:52)

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#6 2014-07-05 14:05:57

Gregosky
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2013-07-26
Posts: 173

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

In my case reinstalling ntp cleared that error out. I was running clean install (3rd of July 2014) and in some point after installing ntpd service I started seeing that error message.

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#7 2014-08-16 10:32:05

doru001
Member
Registered: 2013-01-25
Posts: 138

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

Reinstalling avahi did not correct the error.

/etc $ sudo pwck
user 'addeduser': no group 1001
user 'avahi': no group 84
pwck: no changes
/etc $ sudo grep avahi passwd* group*
passwd:avahi:x:84:84:avahi:/:/bin/false
passwd-:avahi:x:84:84:avahi:/:/bin/false
group:avahi:x:85:
group-:avahi:x:85:
group.bak:avahi:x:84:

What happens if I change avahi:x:85 to avahi:x:84 in /etc/group? Is anything messed up?
After the last update, I used passwd.pacnew, group.pacnew, shadow.pacnew and gshadow.pacnew for a short time, and then I moved them to *.bak's and reverted to the old ones. I don't know what is this mess.
Worse, even the group of an added user is missing. The system is working smoothly.

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#8 2014-08-18 14:35:36

yogimiom
Member
Registered: 2014-03-28
Posts: 9

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

doru001 wrote:

Reinstalling avahi did not correct the error.

Same for me here, as well as for polkitd. In fact there are no groups for those two :

# grep avahi passwd* group*
passwd:avahi:x:84:84:avahi:/:/bin/false
passwd-:avahi:x:84:84:avahi:/:/bin/false

# grep polkitd passwd* group*
passwd:polkitd:x:102:102:Policy Kit Daemon:/:/bin/false
passwd-:polkitd:x:102:102:Policy Kit Daemon:/:/bin/false

I know I messed up merging the .pacnew files hmm
Would creating the groups with groupadd solve the problem ? Something like this :

# groupadd -g 84 avahi
# groupadd -g 102 polkitd

Or am I missing something important here ?

Last edited by yogimiom (2014-08-18 14:37:05)

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#9 2014-09-06 06:29:29

andreagi
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2012-03-08
Posts: 9

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

Even if the first post is several months ago and the previous 3 weeks ago, I'd like to share how I solved this problem using a command of the shadow package:

# grpck

I had some groups duplicated due to a merge of the shadow.pacnew file.

Last edited by andreagi (2014-09-06 06:38:18)

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#10 2014-09-29 13:30:51

colinkeenan
Member
From: Kansas City, MO USA
Registered: 2013-06-13
Posts: 213
Website

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

`sudo grpck` - Worked for me! Thanks. I normally don't bother with pacnew files, but when I do, I let pacmatic handle them. I made the mistake of telling it to replace shadow because I didn't know what it was and so knew I had not edited it. I then had to boot into another Arch install I luckily had on another drive in my computer and revert shadow to an older version. That's when I started getting this error, and `grpck` knew exactly how to fix it.

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#11 2014-10-06 01:12:27

splurben
Member
From: Augusta, Western Australia
Registered: 2014-02-28
Posts: 25
Website

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

colinkeenan wrote:

`sudo grpck` - Worked for me! Thanks. I normally don't bother with pacnew files, but when I do, I let pacmatic handle them. I made the mistake of telling it to replace shadow because I didn't know what it was and so knew I had not edited it. I then had to boot into another Arch install I luckily had on another drive in my computer and revert shadow to an older version. That's when I started getting this error, and `grpck` knew exactly how to fix it.

This worked perfectly for me. I have the habit of manually editing my /etc/passwd and /etc/group files on testing computers.

I guess it's time for me to adopt preferred methods, or at least run grpck after manually editing. Have a look at pwck as well.

Last edited by splurben (2014-10-06 01:18:28)

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#12 2014-10-06 02:16:13

colinkeenan
Member
From: Kansas City, MO USA
Registered: 2013-06-13
Posts: 213
Website

Re: Failed to start Verify integrity of password and group files.

> Have a look at `pwck` as well.

Thanks for that too. I did need to run that because it found several duplicate entries as well as one that shouldn't have been in there anymore. All I had to do was answer yes to everything to fix it.

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