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Wild Penguin

Member

Registered: 2015-03-19

Posts: 406

[SOLVED] Missing dirs /var/spool/(postfix and geoclue) - shadow fails

Hi!

Noticed "shadow" process has failed (Verify integrity of password and group files).

Seems that I'm missing some service userID home directories:

$ sudo systemctl status shadow
● shadow.service - Verify integrity of password and group files
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/shadow.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2019-09-12 00:00:02 EEST; 23h ago
 Main PID: 136275 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

syys 12 00:00:02 ArkkiVille systemd[1]: Started Verify integrity of password and group files.
syys 12 00:00:02 ArkkiVille sh[136275]: user 'postfix': directory '/var/spool/postfix' does not exist
syys 12 00:00:02 ArkkiVille sh[136275]: user 'geoclue': directory '/var/lib/geoclue' does not exist
syys 12 00:00:02 ArkkiVille sh[136275]: pwck: ei muutoksia
syys 12 00:00:02 ArkkiVille systemd[1]: shadow.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
syys 12 00:00:02 ArkkiVille systemd[1]: shadow.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Now, why are this directories missing suddenly? AFAIK I haven't installed anything related to geoclue ever, and IIRC neither for postfix (pacman -Qs comes empty for both, and there's no reference in pacman.log either - I checked in case something had pulled them in at some point).

Now, what would be a sensible approach to fix this? Should I create these directories, or remove these users?

Any ideas what might have caused this situation in the first place?

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2019-10-03 12:01:44)

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 19,047

Re: [SOLVED] Missing dirs /var/spool/(postfix and geoclue) - shadow fails

The geoclue package would create /var/lib/geoclue from a tmpfiles snippet and the user geoclue from a sysusers snippet.
The postfix package contains /var/spool/postfix/ and creates the user postfix from a sysusers snippet.

How did you check pacman.log?  packages do not remove users as per usergroup-management

After checking that no files are owned by the user or group and reowning if needed you can remove the user and group.

Wild Penguin

Member

Registered: 2015-03-19

Posts: 406

Re: [SOLVED] Missing dirs /var/spool/(postfix and geoclue) - shadow fails

Hi,

Thanks loqs! Forgot to reply to this thread.

I just used "grep" on pacman.log. There are no mentions of postfix or geoclue there. However it is certainly possible some other package (I can't think of) created these users at some point and was removed while I have been cleaning the system of no longer needed packages.

I've removed the said users and groups (no files were owned by them). Marking as [SOLVED]!

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 564

Re: [SOLVED] Missing dirs /var/spool/(postfix and geoclue) - shadow fails

Marking as [SOLVED]!

It would be nice, if you edit the Subject in your first post:

from
Missing dirs /var/spool/postfix and /var/lib/geoclue - shadow fails

to
[SOLVED] Missing dirs /var/spool/postfix and /var/lib/geoclue - shadow fails

Thanks !

Last edited by ua4000 (2019-10-03 12:05:36)