You don't exist, go away!

[izard]

I think today was the first time I seen this message in a terminal:
# ssh $IP
do_ypcall: clnt_cal: RPC: Time out
You don't exist, go away!
#

Good sense of humor, guys!

Comments

[outputlogic]

I once saw error handler of some embedded device consistently switching encoding from English to Greek. Not sure if it was a bug or done intentionally, but it was funny to see terminal full of Greek sentences once in a while.

[izard]

Embedded terminal with unicode output - cool :)

[vitus_wagner]

I've encountered such message first time somewhere in previous millenium. On manchine without any NIS or LDAP AFAIR.

It was caused by disk error which destroyed /etc/passwd.

[izard]

So in your case it was reproducible and had a proper cause. In my case it happens in ~2% of ssh sessions to one of the hosts I access from Munich via VPN in Helsinki to San Jose.

Looks like it is my ssh: http://repo.or.cz/w/openssh-git.git/blob/HEAD:/ssh.c#l273

[vitus_wagner]

there is sometihng about ypcall in the error message. yp stands for Yellow Pages, i.e. NIS, very ancient directory service from Sun. NIS is black magic.

It is quite clear what happens - system (libc) function getpwuid is unable to get passwd record for the UID which process is already running under.

This is probably due to some local network glitch, which causes NIS RPC call to fail.