Message during boot: (process:301): GLib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r (): failed due to unknown user id (0) at boot

Question

Today when booting my computer (10.04 32-bit, System76 lemur) Ubuntu ran the hard drive scan -- as it was finishing the screen went black with this message:

(process:301): GLib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r (): failed due to unknown user id (0)

No key functions seemed to work. I restarted the computer with the power switch and it has since been functioning fine... what happened? Is there something wrong?

Answer 1

It has nothing to do with fixing filesystem errors, though it is a rather generic error and hard to diagnose. It could be something serious, but most of the time it's not if GDM is coming up just fine.

There is a bug about it here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/531027 which shows just how generic it can be, feel free to add yourself to the "I am affected by this" list.