I have installed this version of Ubuntu on my laptop. └─ $ ▶ lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS Release: 16.04 Codename: xenial Because of my limited knowledge regarding Linux, I have added a line manually to /etc/passwd My user which I login to the laptop is gofoboso with a password. This user has sudo rights. After adding the second line into the contents following, I do not have sudo rights. root:x:0:0:root:/root:/usr/bin/zsh gofoboso:x:0:0:gofoboso:/gofoboso:/usr/bin/zsh daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin/nologin bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/usr/sbin/nologin I understand that the passwords are encrypted on the /etc/shadow file, and now this has the exact attributes as the root user has (??) ─ $ ▶ sudo cat /etc/shadow [sudo] password for gofoboso: Sorry, try again. [sudo] password for gofoboso: sudo: account validation failure, is your account locked This is the company's laptop and I do not have the root password. I've tried some commands I found online but all of them required sudo. Anyone knows how can I revert this ? Most importantly I cannot restart the laptop or shut it down, because it will ask the password of the user gofoboso, which probably it's the same as root's now ?? If it cannot be fixed without becoming root, If someone knows the root password, and deletes that line the gofoboso user will be enabled again? Thanks.

I would like to know how to cleanly reset the printing system (CUPS) to its initial state. Alternatively, it may suffice for me to know how to take a "snapshot" of CUPS configuration and to roll back to it later. This is to debug the following issue, which I could reproduce on several occasions on Linux Mint 21 and on Ubuntu 22.04. After booting a freshly installed Linux Mint 21 or Ubuntu 22.04 and connecting the machine to my office LAN for the first time, network TOSHIBA e-STUDIO3015AC printers are automatically added to the list of printers as "driverless" and function properly. However, after restarting the machine and after the printers get first removed, then added back to the list, the selection of 2-sided printing in the printing dialog is getting ignored. (The printing becomes one-sided unless changed in the printer options, but if printer option is set to two-sided, then one-sided printing does not work.) I noticed that the second time the automatically generated /etc/cups/printers.conf file contains many extra lines compared to the first time the printers were used, including this one:

Option sides one-sided

*This is basically a duplicate of my question on AskUbuntu.*

I accidently removed the whole /etc folder (rm -f /etc) please don't ask why I was in a rush. Then I panicked and restarted my computer. Now all I have is GRUB. Is there a way to recover my data? I'm on Ubuntu 16.04

I am configuring with Ansible a VM running Ubuntu to run this FTP server: vsftpd, however after the installation when I inspect the logs with journalctl -u vsftpd.service I see:

Nov 20 17:49:58 my-vm systemd: Starting vsftpd FTP server...
Nov 20 17:49:58 my-vm systemd: Started vsftpd FTP server.
Nov 20 17:50:06 my-vm systemd: Stopping vsftpd FTP server...
Nov 20 17:50:06 my-vm systemd: Stopped vsftpd FTP server.
Nov 20 17:50:06 my-vm systemd: Starting vsftpd FTP server...
Nov 20 17:50:06 my-vm systemd: Started vsftpd FTP server.
Nov 20 17:50:06 my-vm systemd: vsftpd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT
Nov 20 17:50:06 my-vm systemd: vsftpd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

I am not sure what's wrong with the configuration I am setting at /etc/vsftpd.conf, this:

anonymous_enable=NO        # disable anonymous login
local_enable=YES           # permit local logins
write_enable=YES           # enable FTP commands which change the filesystem
local_umask=022            # value of umask for file creation for local users
dirmessage_enable=YES      # enable showing of messages when users first enter a new directory
xferlog_enable=YES         # a log file will be maintained detailing uploads and downloads
connect_from_port_20=YES   # use port 20 (ftp-data) on the server machine for PORT style connections
xferlog_std_format=YES     # keep standard log file format
listen=NO                  # prevent vsftpd from running in standalone mode
listen_ipv6=YES            # THIS DOES NOT FIX THE FOLLWING: 'journalctl -u vsftpd.service' gives: 'vsftpd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT'
pam_service_name=vsftpd    # name of the PAM service vsftpd will use
userlist_enable=YES        # enable vsftpd to load a list of usernames
tcp_wrappers=YES           # turn on tcp wrappers
ls_recurse_enable=YES      # allow to recursively inspect the file system (no problem with heavy I/O)
chroot_local_user=YES      # local users limited to their home directories after login (chroot jail)
allow_writeable_chroot=YES # allow chroot jail for local users to be writable
pasv_enable=YES            # enable passive connections
pasv_min_port=10000        # passive connections port range
pasv_max_port=10100        # passive connections port range
ssl_enable=YES             # enable FTPS
ssl_tlsv1=YES              # only TLS (not old SSL standards)
ssl_sslv2=NO               # only TLS (not old SSL standards)
ssl_sslv3=NO               # only TLS (not old SSL standards)
rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
rsa_private_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

- How can I make that FTP server daemon running without errors? - What's wrong with the configuration file?

##### Context 1. Through a bug report and discussion about KDE Plasma's user management KConfig Module silently failing to support commas inside the full name field, I recently came to realise that parsing the GECOS field in /etc/passwd is a rather unstandardised endeavour, [\[2\]] for some applications support the comma-delimited values, [\[5\]] whereas others consider the entire content to be the user's full name. [\[3\]] 1. When I discussed this with the chfn developers at [github.com/util-linux/util-linux/discussions/3589#discussioncomment-13270218](https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/discussions/3589#discussioncomment-13270218:~:text=Maintainer-,POSIX%20defines%20the%20/etc/passwd%20format%2C%20but%20not%20the%20GECOS%20subfields%20and%20separators.,-The%20use%20of) , I was advised that this was the purview of POSIX: > POSIX defines the /etc/passwd format, but not the GECOS subfields and separators. 1. Consequently, I intended to file an ommission bug at The Austin Group MantisBT instance: [\[4\]] However, upon further research, POSIX.1 (The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 8) is too narrow, so I tried The Single UNIX Specification Version 4. Unfortunately, this explicitly states: [\[1\]] > One thing that becomes apparent working with the Single UNIX Specification is its focus on application development. The Single UNIX Specification is similar to the User's and Programmer's Reference Manuals on Berkeley or System V systems. > > Matters of system management are not part of this specification. Directory organization is not discussed beyond the simple few directories and devices that applications generally use. User management discussions do not appear. There is no discussion of such files as /etc/passwd or /etc/groups, since an application's access to the information traditionally kept in these files is through programmatic interfaces such as getpwnam() and getgrnam(). ##### Question Consequently, does *any* organisation exist, that I can petition to, to standardise the escape sequences of /etc/passwd's GECOS field, so that [those who use commas in their names](https://english.stackexchange.com/revisions/324077/2#content:~:text=Organization%20is%20better%20than%20randomness,ordered%20lists%20by%20last%20name.) can? [\[1\]]: https://unix.org/version4/overview.html#:~:text=One%20thing%20that%20becomes%20apparent,such%20as%20getpwnam()%20and%20getgrnam() . [\[2\]]: https://discuss.kde.org/t/why-does-the-users-kcm-prevent-adding-certain-characters-to-names/34772/3?u=rokejulianlockhart#post_3:~:text=If%20I%20understand%20correctly%2C%20the,defined%20in%20the%20first%20place . [\[3\]]: https://discuss.kde.org/t/why-does-the-users-kcm-prevent-adding-certain-characters-to-names/34772/3?u=rokejulianlockhart#post_3:~:text=the%20first%20place.-,There%E2%80%99s%20still%20some%20software%20out%20there%20that%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20recognize%20the%20GECOS%20subfields%20in%20the%20first%20place.%20That%20software%20treats%20commas%20as%20normal%20characters%2C%20confusing%20software%20that%20does%20recognize%20the%20subfields.,-1 [\[4\]]: https://www.reddit.com/r/unix/comments/cf21sh/comment/muj126e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button#:~:text=The%20SUS%20V4%20corresponds%20to,selext%20Issue%207%20+%20TC2 [\[5\]]: https://unix.stackexchange.com/revisions/541197/1#content:~:text=The%20de%20facto%20authoritative%20sources%20for%20this%20information%20are%20sendmail%20server%20and%20finger%20client%20implementations.%20Implementations%20for%20BSDs%20and%20Solaris%20are%20open%20source%2C%20and%20all%20of%20them%20would%20seem%20to%20agree%20on%20the%20above%20rules .

This is the output of the [global] section of the /etc/samba/smb.conf of a random Synology NAS: ~# cat /etc/samba/smb.conf [global] printcap name=cups winbind enum groups=yes include=/var/tmp/nginx/smb.netbios.aliases.conf min protocol=NT1 security=user local master=no realm=* passdb backend=smbpasswd printing=cups max protocol=SMB3 winbind enum users=yes load printers=yes workgroup=WORKGROUP And this is the output of testparm, which is not identical although it says it loaded this configuration file: # testparm -s Load smb config files from /etc/samba/smb.conf ... [global] passdb backend = smbpasswd printcap name = cups realm = * security = USER server min protocol = NT1 syno catia = Yes winbind enum groups = Yes winbind enum users = Yes winbind expand groups = 1 notify:synotify = yes rpc_server:msftewds = embedded rpc_daemon:wspd = disabled fruit:locking = none rpc_server:mdssvc = embedded rpc_daemon:mdssd = disabled idmap config * : backend = syno include = /var/tmp/nginx/smb.netbios.aliases.conf smb encrypt = if_required strict sync = No I know testparm has this option: -v, --verbose Show default options too This explains for example that it does not return max protocol=SMB3, because it is already the default: # testparm -s -v 2>&1 | grep "max protocol" client ipc max protocol = default client max protocol = default server max protocol = SMB3 But why for example does testparm return the values starting with rpc_ or the line fruit:locking = none. It is not set in the smb.conf. And I can't find it in any other file in /etc, too: # grep -rIils fruit /etc # I mean, yes there is a setting in the GUI which seems to enable the vfs module "fruit", but why isn't it mentioned in any Samba Config file?

I've set computer hostname in /etc/hostname a while ago (also there are record in /etc/hosts). Everything worked fine, but recently I've noticed that value of hostname (and /proc/sys/kernel/hostname) changed (to hostname of neighbour computer), although I haven't touched anything related. Value of /etc/hostname remains correct. Which mechanism may cause such change? There are similar problem description , but it doesn't contains any solution.

Am I being a curmudgeon, or should /etc/default be reserved to settings for the operating system? I'm seeing systems show up with /etc/default/{company}-environment. The file is typically Tomcat data, but not always. I've also seen setup data for Mqueue. One objection I've heard that makes sense on a technical level is that it does not allow applications to migrate to Containers. Beyond that, am I just carping? I posted this question over in ServerFault, but it isn't getting any answers. What does the group assembled here think? I've looked in the local Confluence docs and it's been this way for like ten years. The technical curmudgeon in me just objects because /etc should not have anything but operating system components. I'd be interested in others' thoughts.

I red the introduction of them and found that, they both deal with module loading during boot time. So, what's the difference of these two different configuation ways?

I have a setup for an embedded project where I'd like to keep the root filesystem read-only and system configuration on a read/write partition. Users cannot install programs, but they can modify configurations. Most of this is fairly easy except for the /etc directory. It contains configuration that is needed on startup (like fstab) as well as configuration that can be changed (like passwd). I'm not sure what my best option for moving forward. Could I have a default /etc directory and mount over it after boot? How about symlink all the variable configuration files to the read/write partition? Another better solution? For simplicity, consider how this would be done using a Raspberry Pi. Some might (rightly) ask how updates are handled. Updates are compressed and signed images of the root and boot partitions the embedded software know how to install. Hence the desire for a read-only root file system as any changes would be lost on upgrade.

I want to change an entry in /etc/group - specifically, to add some user to some group. But something - I don't know what or who - has created an /etc/group.lock file. fuser /etc/group.lock gives nothing, but that doesn't tell me much. How can I tell who's the "culprit"? And whether I can safely delete the lock file and be able to change /etc/group again? Note: I'm using SLES 15 on an x86_64 machine.

If I modify my /etc/hosts file from this: ## # Host Database # # localhost is used to configure the loopback interface # when the system is booting. Do not change this entry. ## 127.0.0.1 localhost 255.255.255.255 broadcasthost ::1 localhost to this: ## # Host Database # # localhost is used to configure the loopback interface # when the system is booting. Do not change this entry. ## 127.0.0.1 localhost 255.255.255.255 broadcasthost ::1 localhost 127.0.0.1 www.microsoft.com This will redirect any attempt to access www.microsoft.com to 127.0.0.1, effectively blocking access to www.microsoft.com. This works great. Now, instead of redirecting to localhost, I want to redirect to another website, for example, I want to change my /etc/hosts to look like: ## # Host Database # # localhost is used to configure the loopback interface # when the system is booting. Do not change this entry. ## 127.0.0.1 localhost 255.255.255.255 broadcasthost ::1 localhost www.google.com www.microsoft.com However, when I try to visit www.microsoft.com, it never redirects me to www.google.com. It just goes straight to www.microsoft.com and ignores what I did in /etc/hosts. Does anyone know how to fix this or how this can be achieved?

When modifying Linux configuration files, it is often recommended to place local changes under a .d directory, e.g., /etc/sudoers.d/ or /etc/apt/sources.list.d. In my understanding this is to avoid system updates overwriting the local changes if they were directly placed to files such as /etc/sudoers or /etc/apt/sources.list. Is there a similar way to apply local sshd_config settings? Currently, I am direclty modifying the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, but I am worried that I may lose all the changes after some update replacing that file.

SSH is listening on all the available 10 Ethernet interfaces in my system. I have tested using nc 160.49.198.97 22 command in Linux. To allow only particular interface and block others, i have created hosts.deny and hosts.allow files in `/etc/ folder. Below is hosts.deny file sshd: ALL Below is hosts.allow file sshd: 160.49.198.97 Now along with 160.49.198.97, I need to add 160.49.198.185 and 160.49.198.199 also in hosts.allow file. How to add them? Should i separate IP's by comma? or by space ??

I want to create a mirror of my existing Debian server. I modified many files in /etc, and I don't want to redo everything by hand or download huge mirrors. What I thought of doing is 1. Download a list of all files in /etc 2. Download a list of all .deb packages installed Then, on the original server, 1. Expand all .deb into /tmp/etc1 and see which /etc files they install 2. ls /tmp/etc1 > /tmp/listOfOrigEtc 3. ls /tmp/etc > /tmp/listOfEtc 4. diff /tmp/listOfEtc /tmp/listOfOrigEtc > /tmp/listOfFilesToDownload 5. Download all new etc files 6. Using find, see which /etc/ files were *modified* and download them Is there a way to do this **using a single command**?

I came across the messages below with sudo journalctl --since today | tail -n 3000. Shouldn't autostart entries be removed from there when removing a package? It seems like general good practice to remove autostart entries if the package has been removed (or to prompt the user about it during removal or to remove them when running a command like sudo apt-get autoremove). Moreover, wouldn't it cause executables to get autostarted if they are named / aliased / linked in the same way the command in Exec there. If this isn't currently done, what would be the right way to auto-remove these entries? Where could an issue about this exist? For now I under Debian12/KDE just moved them like so sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/xbindkeys.desktop ~/DisabledAutostarts_defunct/xbindkeys.desktop and hope that is fine as is as a workaround. systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: Exec binary 'xbindkeys_autostart' does not exist: No such file or directory systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: /etc/xdg/autostart/xbindkeys.desktop: not generating unit, executable specified in Exec= does not exist. systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: Exec binary '/usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1' does not exist: No such file or directory systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: /etc/xdg/autostart/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop: not generating unit, executable specified in Exec= does not exist. systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: Exec binary 'gsettings-data-convert' does not exist: No such file or directory systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: /etc/xdg/autostart/gsettings-data-convert.desktop: not generating unit, executable specified in Exec= does not exist. systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: Exec binary 'start-pulseaudio-x11' does not exist: No such file or directory systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop: not generating unit, executable specified in Exec= does not exist. systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: Exec binary 'kmixctrl' does not exist: No such file or directory systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: /etc/xdg/autostart/restore_kmix_volumes.desktop: not generating unit, executable specified in Exec= does not exist. systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: Exec binary 'kmix' does not exist: No such file or directory systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: /etc/xdg/autostart/kmix_autostart.desktop: not generating unit, executable specified in Exec= does not exist. systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: Exec binary 'usbguard-applet-qt' does not exist: No such file or directory systemd-xdg-autostart-generator: /etc/xdg/autostart/usbguard-applet-qt.desktop: not generating unit, executable specified in Exec= does not exist. Files that cause things to autostart are different from any /etc/ config file which just provides some configs if the application is running. In addition to the problem mention, it can for example even also be a problem when reinstalling a later version of the same software because it could create an additional entry in that folder with another name so it starts twice. Issue is here now.

I have to use a third party software which officially supports RHEL, SuSE (SLE[DS]) and a certain Ubuntu LTS release. Unfortunately, I use Debian on all my systems. If I run the installer script of the software, it exits with an error message ("Distribution not supported") and doesn't install. The installation download comes with a .deb package which is actually meant for Ubuntu. This .deb file is installed by the installer script if and only if /etc/os-release contains a Ubuntu version (simple String check). But the good news is: You can just find the name of the .deb file and install it manually using dpkg -i on Debian and the installed software works just perfectly. :) There is just one thing I'm not satisfied with: The automated updates feature of the software uses the above mentioned installer script which doesn't like Debian. So I don't get unattended upgrades for this application: The update process successfully downloads new versions including the .deb file but than launches the unwilling installer script instead of just installing the .deb file. The installer exits with error. Update failed. :( (I don't know why the vendor doesn't simply provide a URL for /etc/apt/sources.list.d and instead made this creepy custom update mechanism.) I have to manually download a new version, extract the *.deb file and reinstall that. Do you have some ideas or suggestions what I could do about that? I could simply edit the text file /etc/os-release to say "Ubuntu" instead of "Debian". Then the problem would be gone. But will that have side effects on the system, e.g. trouble with apt-get update && apt-get upgrade? Or can I "mount" a fake /etc/os-release file for a certain systemd service unit? So that only this service thinks it runs on Ubuntu instead of Debian? Maybe something like a chroot? But wouldn't I have to manually keep the entire system copy up-to-date in the chroot directory?

**BACKGROUND** Trevor logs into his account on ssh://foobar.university.edu as one of the developers on the box, and he gets the message: id: cannot find name for group ID 131 Trevor then checks this out using vim /etc/group **PROBLEM** Trevor discovers that there *is* no 131 anywhere in the /etc/group file. Trevor then runs id ... > id trevor uid=4460(trevor) gid=131 groups=48(foobar),51(doobar),131 To discover his primary group apparently does not have a name attached to it. **QUESTIONS** + What likely happened to cause this circumstance on the foobar.university.edu box ? + Suppose trevor wants to fix this (e.g., by just creating a "trevor" group that maps to GID 131) what is the best way to do this without potentially breaking anything else on the server ?

I want to "update" old users with new /etc/skel content on Debian and Ubuntu installations. Scripting this is possible...

find /home -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d | while read homedir; do
    user="$(stat -c%U $homedir)"
    su -c 'tar -cf- -C /etc/skel . | tar -vxf- -C $HOME' $user
done

...but I'm wondering if anyone knows a better way.

I don't switch machines that often, but I don't want to be bound to 1 machine. Often the reason I'm not upgrading my hardware is because I don't want to be setting up a new machine. So far I've made efforts into concentrating most of my stuff in the home directory so that will be easy to backup and deploy on a new machine. Biggest issue are those, possibly hundreds, of config files that live in etc to which I've done some, often miniscule, changes but nothing would work without them on a new machine. I had an idea of making a script that *snatches* files from etc, puts them in my home directory and replaces the original with a symlink. Then I would have another script that on the new machine will go over snatched files and replace the originals with symlinks. I'm not sure how confusing that sounded so here's a quick example. #!/bin/bash FILE=$(realpath $1) TARGET=$(realpath ~/snatched)$FILE mkdir -p $TARGET mv $FILE $TARGET ln -s $TARGET $FILE Then running snatch /etc/hosts Will put /etc/hosts into ~/snatched/etc/hosts and create a symlink at the original location. I'm worried for underwater stones, anything that's gonna make me regret this in the future and essentially advice from more experienced users. Thanks!