libvirt-qemu should be a system account

[Joseph Borg]

When installing libvirt, the user 'libvirt-qemu' is created, but not set as a system account so it appears on the login screen. Current workaround is:

echo -e "[User]\nSystemAccount=true" > /var/lib/AccountsService/users/libvirt-qemu

This is on 16.04.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[GrzesiekC (grzesiekc)]

Hi all,

There is another solution here https://askubuntu.com/questions/897026/why-do-i-have-a-libvirt-qemu-account-in-lock-switch-account-options-in-ubuntu (Apr 14 at 11:11):

"...
For whatever reason the system user "libvirt-gemu" is created with the uid 64055 (at least in Ubuntu 16.04.2).

This is how 16.04.2 creates it:

libvirt-qemu:x:64055:130:Libvirt Qemu,,,:/var/lib/libvirt:/bin/false
libvirt-dnsmasq:x:121:129:Libvirt Dnsmasq,,,:/var/lib/libvirt/dnsmasq:/bin/false

And this is how it should be:

libvirt-qemu:x:125:130:Libvirt Qemu,,,:/var/lib/libvirt:/bin/false
libvirt-dnsmasq:x:121:129:Libvirt Dnsmasq,,,:/var/lib/libvirt/dnsmasq:/bin/false

To correct this simply change the uid of "libvirt-qemu" and it's belonging files. "Libvirt Qemu" will then disappear from the login!

Read e.g. nixCraft - How to Change a USER and GROUP ID on Linux For All Owned Files to know how to do this.
..."

Which one is the "proper" one ?
Regards
Grzesiek

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-change-user-group-uid-gid-for-all-owned-files/

[Lucas Levrel (llev)]

This is not a duplicate of bug #857651 . This one depends on that one, but it's not the same. This bug wouldn't exist if the UID of libvirt-qemu was <1000 (or <500, maybe that depends on /etc/login.defs).

[Christian Ehrhardt (paelzer)]

Hi Lucas, the problem is multi faceted.
Whenever possible it has to be a defined number to e.g. avoid permission issues on migration.
It was requested in [1] to ensure this across Debian/Ubuntu releases and works fine for that.

But in there you will not only see libvirt-qemu, you will see plenty of accounts, all of them "system" accounts but not with uid <1000.
All of the accounts you see there are affected by the same issue, and unless that there is a major overhaul for pre-allocated UIDs to get them in the range of <1000.
In hindsight one might ask to get all those to be added <99 in the master pwd file, but TBH that almost never happens as the risk for colissions is probably too high.

Then in turn this was working in the past and it was working on other Desktop environments.
See the discussions in bug 1667113 and bug 857651.

Let me try to unify the bugs, ping them and ask the Desktop Team for a pre an answer if this could at least be resolved towards 20.04.

[1]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=843881

[sonof (son-of666)]

This also happens in Ubuntu 18.04.