Hello Linux/Ubuntu community,
I have a strange issue on a new Ubuntu 20.04 linux server. In my server I have modified the user nobody to be uid 99 without a problem, ensured there was no process held by this user. However after I changed the UID of nobody user to 99, the getent command gives some strange answers as below.
vijay@nortis:/home/vijay#sudo getent passwd nobody
nobody:x:99:99:nobody:/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
vijay@nortis:/home/vijay#sudo getent passwd 65534
nobody:*:65534:65534:User Nobody:/:/usr/sbin/nologin
vijay@nortis:/home/vijay#grep nobody: /etc/passwd
nobody:x:99:99:nobody:/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
vijay@nortis:/home/vijay#grep nobody: /etc/group
nobody:x:99:
vijay@nortis:/home/vijay#grep 65534 /etc/group
nogroup:x:65534:
vijay@nortis:/home/vijay#ls -l /bin/false
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 39256 Sep 5 2019 /bin/false
vijay@nortis:/home/vijay#sudo useradd -u 65534 -s /bin/false oldnobody
useradd: UID 65534 is not unique
vijay@nortis:/home/vijay#ps -u 65534 PID TTY TIME CMD
vijay@nortis:/home/vijay#I am unable to add a new user with that UID. Are there other places where UID can be fixed invisible. There is nothing in the shadow file either. Very puzzling. Could this be one of systemd effects? Any help or input from Linux experts or Ubuntu experts will be very helpful in resolving this.
