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John
Asked: 2013-10-28 10:26:18 +0800 CST

syntax error: unknown user 'munin' in statoverride file

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Server running Ubuntu 12.04 lts

I installed munin the other day on a server. I decided later to remove it with apt-get.

I noticed that not everything was removed from the installation so manually removed the munin web directory and also removed the munin user-name and group from the sever.

However I have just now tried to run apt-get upgrade which is now returning an error:

dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting: syntax error: unknown user 'munin' in statoverride file E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

I am now out of my depth. What does this mean? Google results have not really been helpful.

Can anyone help?

Thanks, John

munin

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Take a look in

    /var/lib/dpkg/statoverride

    if there is any line

    root munin 750 /etc/munin/plugin-conf.d

    Try:

    dpkg-statoverride --remove /etc/munin/plugin-conf.d
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  2. I noticed that not everything was removed from the installation so manually removed the munin web directory and also removed the munin user-name and group from the sever.

    Don't do that! Because you didn't purged properly the users stored in /etc/passwd file, which dpkg queries to compare with the statoverride file, do not match up and dpkg is throwing a warning. Instead purge the package and dpkg will remove all the directories and users the package created, without the user having to dirt their hands in it.

    sudo apt-get purge package

    This should do it.

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  3. I was trying to reinstall apache2 cause for some reason which I could not fix, it refused to start

    $ sudo apt-get install apache2 dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting: syntax error:unknown group 'nagios' in statoverride file

    Looking into: dpkg/statoverride

    cat /var/lib/dpkg/statoverride root postdrop 2555 /usr/sbin/postdrop root postdrop 2555 /usr/sbin/postqueue root mlocate 2755 /usr/bin/mlocate postfix postdrop 2710 /var/spool/postfix/public root nagios 4750 /check_icmp root ssl-cert 710 /etc/ssl/private root crontab 2755 /usr/bin/crontab

    The solution was to:
    :/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d$ sudo sed -i '/nagios/d' /var/lib/dpkg/statoverride

    And the result
    :/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d$ cat /var/lib/dpkg/statoverride root postdrop 2555 /usr/sbin/postdrop root postdrop 2555 /usr/sbin/postqueue root mlocate 2755 /usr/bin/mlocate postfix postdrop 2710 /var/spool/postfix/public root ssl-cert 710 /etc/ssl/private root crontab 2755 /usr/bin/crontab

    credit: Ubuntu unknown user in statoverride

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