40-permissions.rules incorrectly has an nvram group

[Niall Sheridan]

Binary package hint: udev

As summary. The presence of this group is fine unless nsswitch is set to fetch users/groups from ldap. Then it takes a good 2 minutes for a machine to boot while it tries to contact an ldap server before the network is up.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

You should leave the standard system users and groups in /etc/passwd otherwise the system will not boot correctly -- this is standard practice

[Niall Sheridan (niall)]

My system does not have an nvram group. Nor does any other dapper box I've used. I have not modified /etc/{passwd,shadow}, this group is incorrectly referenced in 40-permissions.rules and beacuse of this nss attempts to look for the group in ldap before the network has been configured and introduces a two minute delay to the boot. Either adding an nvram group locally or deleting this line from 40-permissions.rules fixes the problem.

[Niall Sheridan (niall)]

While I'm at it, my /etc/nsswitch.conf contains this:
passwd: files ldap
shadow: files ldap
group: files ldap

i.e. check files for users and groups first, then fall back to ldap. The nvram group doesn't exist locally so ldap is tried next.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

oh, interesting; where did the nvram group go?

[Niall Sheridan (niall)]

No idea but it's not on any of the machines I have here, and have polled some friends about it.