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[Bug 1300514] Re: Account with UID 501 disappeared after update

 

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

** Changed in: accountsservice (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Confirmed

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1300514

Title:
  Account with UID 501 disappeared after update

Status in accountsservice package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  After today performing a system update from 13.10 [previously updated
  cca 1mo ago], my account with UID has disappeared from lightdm.

  /etc/login.defs, /etc/adduser.conf and /etc/lightdm/users.conf have
  all been configured to treat users with minimum UID 500 as regular
  users.

  The remark in users.conf mentioning AccountsService gave me a hint to
  explore what this service is.  It's very nasty that this completely
  opaque and unknown service determines whether an account will appear
  on the list or not.

  Digging around its process /usr/lib/accountsservice/accounts-daemon
  (what a nasty place to put this binary) using strace, I noticed
  /var/lib/AccountsService/users/myusername is being accessed. This may
  be obvious to developers, but to someone troubleshooting, it's bad and
  unexpected.

  I fixed my issue by editing the aforementioned file and replacing
  "SystemAccount=true" with "SystemAccount=false", killing the accounts-
  daemon and (to avoid restart) starting it in terminal. This would all
  be worth just a rant instead of a bug report, were it not for the fact
  that only today have I logged in correctly from the main screen,
  updated the system, and after only a reboot -- without touching or
  knowing about /var/lib/AccountsService/users directory -- my account
  has disappeared. Either this directory was automagically touched, or
  "SystemAccount=true" previously didn't affect lightdm.

  Please provide and expose a canonical and universal place to determine
  minimum UID for the system to treat a user account as a "human"
  account. Having three somewhat-documented files and none of them
  having effect upon accountsservice is quite bad.

  If this package is inappropriate for this bug report, please reassign.

  [The reason why UID 1000 is no-good are OS X partitions -- on which
  I'd like to be able to access my files without resorting to sudo
  voodoo. The default UID on OS X happens to be 501.]

  Package version: 0.6.34-0ubuntu6

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
  Package: lightdm 1.8.5-0ubuntu1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-18.32-generic 3.11.10.4
  Uname: Linux 3.11.0-18-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: wl nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.2
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Tue Apr  1 00:43:23 2014
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-02-18 (41 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
  MarkForUpload: True
  SourcePackage: lightdm
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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