What does `Unknown id` mean?

Question

When I start or reboot my Ubuntu Server I get a lot of messages starting this or that but towards the end I get a message Unknown id: /home/kevin/riak-1.2.1/dev/dev1/bin/riak. I checked the <path> and it exists and is the same path as in the error message. I am thinking that this error comes from init.d and at this point in the boot up process the /home/kevin part of the path doesn't exist yet or there is a permission problem. Here is a copy of the ls -l output with an appended pwd:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 kevin kevin     0 Nov  8 12:08 ls.txt
-rwx------ 1 kevin kevin  8531 Sep 25 23:22 riak
-rwx------ 1 kevin kevin 17710 Sep 25 23:22 riak-admin
-rwx------ 1 kevin kevin  2400 Sep 25 23:22 search-cmd
/home/kevin/riak-1.2.1/dev/dev1/bin

The script that I suspect is at fault has these lines:

su - /home/kevin/riak-1.2.1/dev/dev1/bin/riak -c "$DAEMON $DAEMON_ARGS" || return 2
su - /home/kevin/riak-1.2.1/dev/dev2/bin/riak -c "$DAEMON $DAEMON_ARGS" || return 2
su - /home/kevin/riak-1.2.1/dev/dev3/bin/riak -c "$DAEMON $DAEMON_ARGS" || return 2
su - /home/kevin/riak-1.2.1/dev/dev4/bin/riak -c "$DAEMON $DAEMON_ARGS" || return 2

If it is a permission problem please explain why the system cannot execute/read these files.

Solution

Take a look at the man page for su.

man su

Check the first 4 lines...

NAME
       su - run a shell with substitute user and group IDs

SYNOPSIS
       su [OPTION]... [-] [USER [ARG]...]

Essentially what you are doing, is trying to run a shell as "/home/kevin/riak-1.2.1/dev/dev4/bin/riak." Since you probably don't have a userid of that exact string, it is (correctly) telling you that it cannot find a user by that identifier.

Comments

[Kevin Burton]

So what do I do? I have included the full init script below. This pattern is all throughout the script. Something must have changed to make this invlid. 'su' is taking the input from STDIN (notice '-'). I cannot include the full text as I am limited to the number of characters in the comment.

[Aaron]

Your original question asked about why you were getting "Unknown id", and I knew why you were getting that. As for applying it to what you're trying to do, I'm not too sure. You can try this, but it will probably prompt you for a password: su - kevin -c "/home/kevin/riak-1.2.1/dev/dev4/bin/riak $DAEMON $DAEMON_ARGS" || return 2

[Aaron]

@KevinBurton hey, how did this turn out for you? Did you get it fixed?