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#1 2011-08-21 03:41:17

sa1
Member
Registered: 2011-08-21
Posts: 20

User suddenly removed from all groups.

I suddenly found my user account removed from all groups except tty and users. Since I am the only one administrating my laptop, I am not sure how this could happen. The last thing I remember doing which could perhaps have a consequence is merging .pacnew files. But I did have sudo rights after doing the merges, so that theory doesn't hold. How could this happen?

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#2 2011-08-21 04:37:24

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: User suddenly removed from all groups.

did you upgrade filesystem?

sa1 wrote:

The last thing I remember doing which could perhaps have a consequence is merging .pacnew files.

That right there is your problem. Do not blindly overwrite files with pacnew files. Try to understand what the files do. filesystem package owns a file called /etc/group which holds all your group membership information for your user. You obviously overwrote it with the new pacnew file. Don't log out before making the necessary changes and adding back your user to the required groups or you might not be able to log back in.


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There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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#3 2011-08-21 08:37:37

sa1
Member
Registered: 2011-08-21
Posts: 20

Re: User suddenly removed from all groups.

Inxsible wrote:

did you upgrade filesystem?

No, I didn't.

Inxsible wrote:

That right there is your problem. Do not blindly overwrite files with pacnew files. Try to understand what the files do. filesystem package owns a file called /etc/group which holds all your group membership information for your user. You obviously overwrote it with the new pacnew file.

I didn't blindly do it. This was my first time but I was being careful. In fact I ran the merging script (from the archwiki) again and there was no pacnew file for /etc/group. The pacnew files were for mirrorlist, rc.conf and /etc/fstab and these are the only things I remember editing.

Inxsible wrote:

Don't log out before making the necessary changes and adding back your user to the required groups or you might not be able to log back in.

I've already logged myself back in to check whether that restored anything or not (It didn't). And I've got root access so I can always add myself back to the groups, I just don't understand what might have caused my problem.

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#4 2011-08-21 08:45:51

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: User suddenly removed from all groups.

/etc/fstab and /etc/group are provided by the same package http://www.archlinux.org/packages/core/any/filesystem/ and after my recent update there were .pacnew files for them both.

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#5 2011-08-21 11:32:44

thisoldman
Member
From: Pittsburgh
Registered: 2009-04-25
Posts: 1,172

Re: User suddenly removed from all groups.

@karol, some people would not receive a group.pacnew file with the filesystem upgrade.  I did not.

I'm pretty sure I received a group.pacnew with the change to udev 173-3.  My last modification to /etc/group is dated 2011-08-08, near the time of the udev upgrade, 2011-08-03.

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#6 2011-08-21 11:59:18

sa1
Member
Registered: 2011-08-21
Posts: 20

Re: User suddenly removed from all groups.

I do not see a /etc/groups.pacnew file and my /etc/groups was last modified on 20th August, while I did my .pacnew merging on 18th. (rc.conf and fstab show modification times on 18th). I have not added my user back to any groups yet, so the last modification must be the one where /etc/groups got reset.

sa1 wrote:
Inxsible wrote:

did you upgrade filesystem?

No, I didn't.

Correction there. I guess it would have been upgraded while doing pacman -Syu if it had a recent update. The fstab.pacnew file was generated on 10th August so I guess that is the time when filesystem was upgraded.

Last edited by sa1 (2011-08-21 12:16:43)

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#7 2011-08-21 12:15:00

thisoldman
Member
From: Pittsburgh
Registered: 2009-04-25
Posts: 1,172

Re: User suddenly removed from all groups.

This will tell you when you installed or upgraded filesystem.

grep ' filesystem' /var/log/pacman.log

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#8 2011-08-21 12:32:07

sa1
Member
Registered: 2011-08-21
Posts: 20

Re: User suddenly removed from all groups.

thisoldman wrote:

This will tell you when you installed or upgraded filesystem.

grep ' filesystem' /var/log/pacman.log

It shows
[2011-07-26 06:45] installed filesystem (2011.04-1)
[2011-08-17 01:09] upgraded filesystem (2011.04-1 -> 2011.08-1).

I don't know how fstab.pacnew got modified on 10th. Sigh.
stat shows
Access: 2011-08-21 13:59:00.443682027 +0530
Modify: 2011-08-10 05:11:13.000000000 +0530
Change: 2011-08-17 01:09:08.714123169 +0530

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