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Description of problem: chown can give a misleading and irrelevant error message if a non-existant user id is given. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): coreutils-5.97-4 How reproducible: Everytime. Steps to Reproduce: 1. # chown sapoqwegfj /dev/ttyS1 chown: `sapoqwegfj': invalid user 2. ~# chown sapoqwegfj: /dev/ttyS1 chown: `sapoqwegfj:': cannot get the login group of a numeric UID Actual results: The second error message "cannot get the login group of a numeric UID" does not indicate the actual problem. Expected results: The second error message be identical to the first, or at least should indicate that the given user name does not exist. Additional info:
Thanks for the report. I've just fixed this upstream. Here's the ChangeLog entry: * userspec.c (parse_with_separator): Say "invalid spec" rather than the sometimes erroneous "cannot get the login group of a numeric UID" for a spec like "not-a-username:" or "1:". Reported by suckfish@ihug.co.nz in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/199027.