ntpd fails to start, "Cannot find user 'ntp'"

[Claes Wallin]

Package: ntp
Version: 1:4.2.0a-11ubuntu2
Severity: grave
Tags: patch
Justification: renders package unusable

For some unknown reason, ntpd.c gets null response from getpwnam(user).
*user is "ntp" and user ntp exists in /etc/passwd. A test program doing
the exakt same thing returns a valid passwd struct.

A workaround is to put the parameter

"-u `getent passwd ntp|cut -f 3 -d :`"

in /etc/init.d/ntp-server, but the real solution is of course to find
out why a simple getpwnam call fails.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.10-1-686
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages ntp depends on:
ii  libc6                2.3.2.ds1-20ubuntu1 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libcap1              1:1.10-14           support for getting/setting POSIX.
ii  libreadline4         4.3-15              GNU readline and history libraries
ii  libssl0.9.7          0.9.7e-3            SSL shared libraries
ii  psmisc               21.5-1              Utilities that use the proc filesy

-- no debconf information