pwck - Element »NONEXISTENT« and »PREVENT_NO_AUTH« unknown

[JMLatGitHub]

My system is based on Debian Sid (Bookworm, V12 Testing), Kernel Linux 5.18.0-4-amd64, SMP Debian 5.18.16-1 (2022-08-10).

In the origin, I noticed that these usermod commands generated the following two messages each:

root@xyz:~# usermod -c 'XYZ Server' -g xyz -d /var/lib/xyz -m -s /usr/sbin/nologin xyz
Konfigurationsfehler - Element »NONEXISTENT« unbekannt (Administrator verständigen).
Konfigurationsfehler - Element »PREVENT_NO_AUTH« unbekannt (Administrator verständigen).
usermod: Keine Änderungen
root@xyz:~#

root@xyz:~# usermod -aG somegroup xyz
Konfigurationsfehler - Element »NONEXISTENT« unbekannt (Administrator verständigen).
Konfigurationsfehler - Element »PREVENT_NO_AUTH« unbekannt (Administrator verständigen).
root@xyz:~#

Doing some further investigations, I found out that these messages were most likely related to definitions inside the /etc/login.defs file

root@xyz:~# find /etc -type f -exec grep -H NONEXISTENT {} \;
/etc/login.defs:NONEXISTENT     /nonexistent

root@xyz:~# find /etc -type f -exec grep -H PREVENT_NO_AUTH {} \;
/etc/login.defs:PREVENT_NO_AUTH superuser

which contains the following entries:

#
# The pwck(8) utility emits a warning for any system account with a home
# directory that does not exist.  Some system accounts intentionally do
# not have a home directory.  Such accounts may have this string as
# their home directory in /etc/passwd to avoid a spurious warning.
#
NONEXISTENT     /nonexistent

#
# Prevents an empty password field to be interpreted as "no authentication
# required".
# Set to "yes" to prevent for all accounts
# Set to "superuser" to prevent for UID 0 / root (default)
# Set to "no" to not prevent for any account (dangerous, historical default)
PREVENT_NO_AUTH superuser

When pwck is invoked without any arguments, the following messages are displayed on my system:

root@xyz:~# pwck
Konfigurationsfehler - Element »NONEXISTENT« unbekannt (Administrator verständigen).
Konfigurationsfehler - Element »PREVENT_NO_AUTH« unbekannt (Administrator verständigen).
Benutzer »lp«: Verzeichnis »/var/spool/lpd« existiert nicht.
Benutzer »news«: Verzeichnis »/var/spool/news« existiert nicht.
Benutzer »uucp«: Verzeichnis »/var/spool/uucp« existiert nicht.
Benutzer »list«: Verzeichnis »/var/list« existiert nicht.
Benutzer »irc«: Verzeichnis »/run/ircd« existiert nicht.
Benutzer »gnats«: Verzeichnis »/var/lib/gnats« existiert nicht.
Benutzer »nobody«: Verzeichnis »/nonexistent« existiert nicht.
Benutzer »_apt«: Verzeichnis »/nonexistent« existiert nicht.
pwck: Keine Änderungen
root@xyz:~#

For me, it looks like there must be an anomaly in somewhere.

[jubalh]

My system is based on Debian Sid

Based on? Is it Debian Sid or is it some derivate?

@JMLatGitHub did you find anything our/is this still relevant?

[theedge456]

I noticed the same symptoms on devuan/daedalus (derived from bookworm).
The package release is passwd:amd64/daedalus 1:4.8.1-1
In the log, look for NONEXISTENT.
The translation is unkown object 'NONEXISTENT' (warn the administrator)
error.zip

[theedge456]

Forget my previous message.
The issue is not present in passwd:amd64/daedalus 1:4.13