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Installing packages with pacman sometimes echo's
Creating system user accounts...
Creating user "username" (n/a) with uid XXX and gid YYY
What does this "n/a" mean?
Last edited by probackup-nl (2021-02-11 15:24:14)
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What does this "n/a" mean?
In general, it means https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N/A
In this context, it's systemd-sysusers that displays that information (you can grep /usr/share/libalpm/hooks for "Creating system user accounts" to see which hook (and ultimately which hook command) is run there).
If you then search Google a little, you see that the corresponding code is in systemd's src/sysusers/sysusers.c:
log_info("Creating user %s (%s) with uid " UID_FMT " and gid " GID_FMT ".", i->name, strna(i->description), i->uid, i->gid);
i->description is set a little further up in the same file:
r = free_and_strdup(&i->description, p->pw_gecos);
The GECOS information is the 5th column in a user's passwd entry. Unless it is set to something specific, it's usually empty, in which case I assume systemd transforms that information to "n/a" there.
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@ayekat Thanks for your rapid and qualitative reply and the included hyperlinks.
I can follow your steps. Although I have too little knowledge (yet) to figure this all out by myself.
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