(mac_ntpd) chown: ntpd: illegal user

[Carmel NY]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 07:07:00 +0100, Polytropon stated:

>On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:53:07 +0100, Matthias Fechner wrote:
>> Am 19.12.2018 um 19:45 schrieb Carmel NY:  
>> > After updating to FreeBSD 12, I am getting this error when booting up.
>> > Since I never personally touched 'ntpd', the update caused this problem.
>> >
>> > Security policy loaded: MAC/ntpd
>> > (mac_ntpd) chown: ntpd: illegal user
>> > name Starting ntpd.  
>> 
>> I had a similar problem.
>> 
>> Typed vipw added an empty line and deleted it again, save and close.
>> The required files had been generated again and problem was solved for
>> me.  
>
>It seems that the step of using pwd_mkdb to update the
>user and password database has been missing somewhere;
>see "man pwd_mkdb" for details - you can manually invoke
>the appropriate command. :-)

Actually, it is slightly more complicated than that. See:
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=232921

Restarting "ntpd" after running "pwd_mkdb" fixes most problems; however, the
pid file is unwritable by "ntpd". The file should be manually removed prior
to restarting the "ntpd" service.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that nobody discovered this problem
prior to releasing the update. I saw notices about it in the "beta" versions.
It should have been corrected.

-- 
Carmel