ubuntu 16 pwck error

[latimerio]

running pwck after installing ubuntu 16 gives an error:
pwck
user 'systemd-resolve': directory '/run/systemd/resolve' does not exist

I think that every home directory specified in /etc/passwd must exist.
If systemd-resolve has a volatile home directory I expect this directory to be created at boot time.

It seems that there is no regression test before release that makes sure that no such errors are reported.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The man page for pwck indicates that the message you are seeing is a warning and not an error.

"All other errors are warning and the user is encouraged to run the usermod command to correct the error."

If you run pwck with --quiet pwck will only report errors and not warnings and you will no longer see the message about '/run/systemd/resolve'.

[latimerio (fomember)]

Why was this bug marked as invalid?
If a command gives a warning it shows that something is not properly implemented.
Either the warning is deprecated or the cause for the warning is reasonable and the issue should be fixed.
My understanding of proper programming is that every entry in /etc/passwd must have existing values.
So if there is a home dir specified in /etc/passwd I expect it to exist or to be created at boot time.
Ohterwise programs that may rely on the values in /etc/passwd may not work properly.

[latimerio (fomember)]

Rationale:
A users home directory may hold .ssh/authorized_keys and thus allow users to login without password.
Thus our company has a check for those files because an unclean authorized_keys can be a big security issue.
This check fails if a home directory doesn't exist.
We can try to fix the check but as I stated the expectation is, that a freshly installed system wouldn't have any wrongly setup passwd file.

[Lorens Kockum (lorensk)]

I agree with latimero, this is very disagreeable, especially as the home directory of systemd-resolve (and irc) disappear without being recreated at reboot. At least /run is not +t like /tmp.