Linux: id: cannot find name for group ID 999

Question

When I try to run a new bash instance [egg@localhost ~]$ bash

I receive id: cannot find name for group ID 999

In /etc/group there is no group with that Id #. Where is this ID being referenced from?

Looks like something in your bash startup scripts is calling id; what do you get if you type `id`? — Jeff Schaller, Apr 02 '17 at 03:18
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r — Rice, Apr 02 '17 at 03:34
Why does that look like output from the root user instead of the "egg" user? — Jeff Schaller, Apr 02 '17 at 03:35
@JeffSchaller ahh yes, I ran it by accident as root `uid=1000(egg) gid=999 groups=999,1000(seqw) context=unconfined_u:` where do I change that gid 999? — Rice, Apr 02 '17 at 03:40

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 02 '17 at 07:01

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It looks like you created the user egg with uid 1000 and assigned group id 999 to it, but somehow the name of the group has not been written to /etc/group. Maybe the group egg should have id 999 instead? That's the convention, anyway.

edited Apr 02 '17 at 07:01

Alxs

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answered Apr 02 '17 at 05:44

Johan Myréen

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there is no group named egg in my system anymore but before there was. Right now the user name is egg and the group no longer exists – Rice Apr 03 '17 at 00:49
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Run `grep egg /etc/passwd` and I bet it says something like `egg:x:1000:999:Egg:/bin/bash`. The 999 is the primary group id associated with the user egg. Bash complains because the group is missing in `/etc/group`. – Johan Myréen Apr 03 '17 at 06:50

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 03 '17 at 00:50

Something in your bash startup files is calling id -gn (or something similar to that), which asks the id command to look up the name of your primary group, which isn't listed in /etc/group.

Perhaps you used to have a group named egg that had GID 999; you could look for that with: grep ^egg: /etc/group. If it's not there, you could add it: sudo groupadd -g 999 egg.

Perhaps you meant to use a different GID when you created the egg account; if there is an egg group in /etc/group, but with a different GID -- say, 1000 -- then you could fix it with: usermod -g 1000 egg (or usermod -g egg egg).

I rebooted this morning and suddenly Im not running into the problem anymore. I will try the fix if it comes up again. — Rice, Apr 21 '17 at 03:22

Linux: id: cannot find name for group ID 999

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