libuuid & NIS mess

After updating to 8.04 LTS you'll better check your /etc/passwd

If you have new 'daemon users' there with UID larger than any of your NIS exported users, you're likely to get in trouble. In mine, I got a new "user" called libuuid with an UID 517.

On each machine in your network (including the server):

• As root modify the UID for libuuid from 517 to 499 ("First NIS UID" -1)
• chown -R libuuid:libuuid /var/lib/libuuid

This is tedious work if you have more than a few machines. I'm considering to re-ID my users instead, since it seems that UID starting at 1000 instead of 500 (as it used to be ages ago) has become widely adopted.

Re-id'ing a daemon is bound to lead to issues - if not sooner then at least at next update.

This issue possibly affects GDM and the list of users visible in the face-browser too.

References:
http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl3_libuuid.htm