Macos – com.apple.launchd: com.apple.launchd.peruser error

consolelaunchdmacososx lion

It's been a couple of days I am reading these errors in the system log file.

25/11/11 21:31:43,373 com.apple.launchd: (com.apple.launchd.peruser.32697[92747]) getpwuid("32697") failed
25/11/11 21:31:43,374 com.apple.launchd: (com.apple.launchd.peruser.32697[92747]) Exited with code: 1
25/11/11 21:31:43,374 com.apple.launchd: (com.apple.launchd.peruser.32697) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

I have OSX Lion 10.7.2.
These message go over and over every few seconds, I've goggled getpwuid() and it seems to be a system call.
I have also read some superuser posts about this issue:
https://superuser.com/search?q=com.apple.launchd.peruser
but running the reported commands in the console did not gave me any hint on how to solve this problem.

I've traced back the first appearance of this error to the 20th of November, here are the previous lines of the system.log file:

Nov 20 17:22:10 MacBook-Pro com.apple.backupd[45360]: Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro/2011-11-18-215307 (64.9 MB)
Nov 20 17:22:26 MacBook-Pro com.apple.backupd[45360]: Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro/2011-11-18-205448 (88.3 MB)
Nov 20 17:22:26 MacBook-Pro com.apple.backupd[45360]: Post-back up thinning complete: 5 expired backups removed
Nov 20 17:22:28 MacBook-Pro com.apple.backupd[45360]: Backup completed successfully.
Nov 20 17:23:47 MacBook-Pro iCal[45376]: ServerNotifications: Setting delegate to APSD
Nov 20 17:23:47 MacBook-Pro iCal[45376]: ServerNotification: configureService called with nil password
Nov 20 17:23:55 MacBook-Pro iCal[45376]: Subscription request completed
Nov 20 17:28:47 MacBook-Pro com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.32697[45390]): getpwuid("32697") failed
Nov 20 17:28:47 MacBook-Pro com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.32697[45390]): Exited with code: 1
Nov 20 17:28:47 MacBook-Pro com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.32697): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

After this there are (really) tons of messages of this kind.

Do anyone have any hint?

Best Answer

Per-user launchd job overrides (e.g. which per-user jobs are disabled for a user) are located in subdirectories of /private/var/db/launchd.db/, e.g. com.apple.launchd.peruser.501.

Open Terminal and see who owns this directory:

ls -ld /private/var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd.peruser.32697

If the owner (third column) is not a user name, but a numeric ID, that user does not (any longer) exist on your system.

You can just remove that directory and be done with it. If there are special rules in the overrides.plist, it might help you understand the origin of that user and the launchd jobs.

To find out when that launchd per-user directory was created, enter

stat /private/var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd.peruser.32697

It's the last (fourth) date printed.

To find all files on your system not owned by a known user, enter

find / -nouser -ls

If 32697 is not a user on your system (no user name), this might give you some information (e.g. files related to a particular application you installed could mean that application messed with your user settings)

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