Upgrade deletes user name

[Rod Grasso]

Description: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Release: 22.04

I have a user account called rod
I created it from a root terminal with adduser rod && usermod -u 49 rod
When I upgraded from 20 to 21 the user was deleted
The /home/rod files were intact.
To recover the user I had to delete rod from /etc/group
adduser rod && usermod -u 49 rod
When I upgraded from 21 to 22 the account was deleted
The /home/rod files were intact.
To recover the user I had to delete rod from /etc/group
adduser rod && usermod -u 49 rod

There is no justification for an upgrade to delete a user.

The purpose of "usermod -u 49 rod" is so that user rod does not show on the login screen.

I suspect this is the reasoning behind removing the user.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:22.04.11
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-39.42-generic 5.15.35
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-39-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.1
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Jun 21 04:30:29 2022
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
Symptom: dist-upgrade
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to jammy on 2022-06-17 (2 days ago)
VarLogDistupgradeTermlog:

[Nick Rosbrook (enr0n)]

Hmm, I am not sure why this is happening, but yes I would also guess it's because you set your UID to 49, which is in the "system" (i.e. non-human) UID range [1].

In any case, ubuntu-release-upgrader is not doing this. Rather, it would likely be caused by a specific package upgrade.

[1] https://systemd.io/UIDS-GIDS/

[Nick Rosbrook (enr0n)]

Oh, there it is (from VarLogDistupgradeApttermlog.txt):

Preparing to unpack .../base-passwd_3.5.52build1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking base-passwd (3.5.52build1) over (3.5.51) ...
Setting up base-passwd (3.5.52build1) ...
Removing user "rod" (49)
1 changes have been made, rewriting files
Writing passwd-file to /etc/passwd
Writing shadow-file to /etc/shadow
Writing group-file to /etc/group

[Rod Grasso (rodwa)]

I forget to mention that minor revision upgrades are OK.

On 21/06/2022 9:56 pm, Nick Rosbrook wrote:
> Oh, there it is (from VarLogDistupgradeApttermlog.txt):
>
> Preparing to unpack .../base-passwd_3.5.52build1_amd64.deb ...
> Unpacking base-passwd (3.5.52build1) over (3.5.51) ...
> Setting up base-passwd (3.5.52build1) ...
> Removing user "rod" (49)
> 1 changes have been made, rewriting files
> Writing passwd-file to /etc/passwd
> Writing shadow-file to /etc/shadow
> Writing group-file to /etc/group
>
> ** Package changed: ubuntu-release-upgrader (Ubuntu) => base-passwd
> (Ubuntu)
>
> ** Changed in: base-passwd (Ubuntu)
> Status: Incomplete => New
>

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