---
title: syntax error unknown user
subtitle: ...in statoverride file
date: 2013-01-29
keywords: [ubuntu, apt-get, statoverride]
---

I used `apt-get` to remove the puppet packages, but I removed the
_puppet_ user by hand. Same happened for mediatomb.

After doing this, I kept seeing this error:

```plaintext
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
 syntax error: unknown user 'puppet' in statoverride file
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
```

and also

```plaintext
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
 syntax error: unknown user 'mediatomb' in statoverride file
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
```

Here's how I fixed it after the tips in "[HowTo: Ubuntu unknown user in statoverride][1]":

```bash
sudo sed -i '/puppet/d' /var/lib/dpkg/statoverride
```

and

```bash
sudo sed -i '/mediatomb/d' /var/lib/dpkg/statoverride
```

Backup to yor taste.

[1]: http://rickfoosusa.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/howto-ubuntu-unknown-user-in.html