Question

Debian 9.3 droplet issues with useradd

I created a new Debian 9.3 droplet and logged in as root.

  • It seems, there is by default already a non-root user “debian” created. Is there a reason for this?

  • useradd command gives strange notices:

$ useradd -m foo
sent invalidate(passwd) request, exiting
sent invalidate(group) request, exiting

This seems to be oputput from the nscd application.

Similar output is generated also with “adduser” command

$ adduser asd
Adding user `asd' ...
sent invalidate(passwd) request, exiting
sent invalidate(group) request, exiting
Adding new group `asd' (1001) ...
sent invalidate(passwd) request, exiting
sent invalidate(group) request, exiting
sent invalidate(group) request, exiting
sent invalidate(passwd) request, exiting
sent invalidate(group) request, exiting
Adding new user `asd' (1001) with group `asd' ...
sent invalidate(passwd) request, exiting
sent invalidate(group) request, exiting
sent invalidate(passwd) request, exiting
sent invalidate(group) request, exiting
sent invalidate(passwd) request, exiting
sent invalidate(group) request, exiting
Creating home directory `/home/asd' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for asd
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
	Full Name []: asdd
	Room Number []: asd
	Work Phone []: asd
	Home Phone []: asd
	Other []: asd
sent invalidate(passwd) request, exiting
sent invalidate(group) request, exiting
sent invalidate(passwd) request, exiting

Is this really a feature?

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Jose J. Fernández • January 21, 2018

I am having the same issues. Looks like it’s not an issue, but you can get rid of it by removing the name caching servie:

# apt-get remove unscd
Wayne Sallee • April 8, 2018

I can’t see any possible reason not to remove both of them. So I sent an e-mail to digitalocean:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/debian-9-3-droplet-issues-with-useradd?answer=42778

It would be good to get an official answer on this.

Is there any reason to keep the debian user or to keep the pre-installed and buggy unscd ?

Digigal Ocean response:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting DigitalOcean!

You could purge the unscd user from your end and try again to add the user. Please run the following commands:

apt-get remove --purge unscd
userdel -r debian

Please feel free to reach out to us via this ticket if you have further queries or concerns, we will be around to help you out!

Kind Regards,

Sandesh
Platform Support Specialist
DigitalOcean

Maybe they should add this to their documents, and anything else that should be removed from their droplets.

Strange forum here, I see a “code” function, but not a “quote” function.

Wayne Sallee Wayne@WayneSallee.com

Sean Brady • February 20, 2019

This issue caused changing the shell on my droplet from sh to zsh to fail. Removing unscd resolved the issue. Filing a bug.