Solved pkg: Unable to drop privileges: no 'nobody' user

[hbsd]

Hi, After issues during the update process, I'm unable to install or update packages.
Currently, when I try to install a package, I get this error:

Unable to drop privileges: no 'nobody' user

Even when I try to update my system, it says I already have the latest update, and upgrading to version 14 is not possible for me.

I would appreciate it if you could help me resolve this issue:

uname -a:
FreeBSD FreeBSD 13.3-RELEASE-p7 FreeBSD 13.3-RELEASE-p7 GENERIC amd64

 

[Emrion]

I suppose you can create it with adduser.

Name: nobody
Uid: 65534
Home: nonexistent
login: nologin
Use password: no

 

[gotnull]

Following the advice given by Emrion you can indeed recreate the deleted user and do not forget to create the group "nobody" also.
First check if the user and the group nobody vanished:
$ grep nobody /etc/passwd
$ grep nobody /etc/groups

If it returns nothing then recreate them:
# pw groupadd nobody -g 65534
# pw useradd nobody -u 65534 -g 65534 -d /nonexistent -s /usr/sbin/nologin -c 'Unprivileged user'

Credit goes to SirDice, I found it in this thread:

Solved Post in thread 'Problem running pkg update'

Nov 9, 2021

Someone deleted user nobody from the system.

That's an odd issue. If the user 'nobody' has been removed, double check if you still have a group called 'nobody' too.

Is there any other way to recreate the user?

It's best to use pw(8) for this, you have much better control over all the settings than the 'canned' adduser(8), which is primarily for interactively creating 'regular' user accounts.

pw groupadd nobody -g 65534 # Creates the group 'nobody' with a specific GID.
pw useradd nobody -u 65534 -g 65534 -d /nonexistent -s /usr/sbin/nologin -c...

• SirDice

• 

 

[hbsd]

Thank you all! Problem solved! ))

 

[Emrion]

Following the advice given by Emrion you can indeed recreate the deleted user and do not forget to create the group "nobody" also

The group of the same name and id is automatically created by adduser.