"ps -ef" Displays UID Rather Than User Name


Contents

About this document
Symptoms
Reasons

About this document

This document contains the symptoms and reasons why the ps -ef command displays a UID rather than a login name. This document applies to AIX Versions 4.x.

Symptoms


Reasons

There are a few reasons why the ps -ef command displays a UID rather than the login name.

  1. If the process was run by a user whose name was removed from the /etc/passwd file (such as during the running process), ps will report the UID as the owner of the process.

  2. If the /etc/passwd file or the NIS master (or slave) server could not be reached at the time ps -ef was issued, the UID will replace the login name for a particular process.

  3. If the master server modifies the /etc/passwd file, the client machine will not immediately show the changes. If you add a user to the system on the master machine, the local machine will need to re-read the /etc/passwd file from the server to notice the changes. The client version of the passwd file contains only a few names and the NIS sequence at the end. Based on the modification time, the client may not see the changes.

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"ps -ef" Displays UID Rather Than User Name: ITEM: FAX
Dated: 2000/08/09~00:00 Category: cmd
This HTML file was generated 2001/03/08~16:06:03
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