SVM access fails with secd.unixLookupFailure:error Alerts

Applies to

• Ontap 9.x
• Name mapping
• NAS

Issue

• Users trying to connect to vServer fails to retrieve the UID and GID and gets below error:

Thu Jun 26 01:40:20 -0400 [vServer: secd: secd.unixLookupFailure:error]: UNIX lookup failure on Vserver (vServer) for client with IP address (xx.xx.xx.xx). 
Error: Acquire UNIX credentials procedure failed   [  1 ms] Entry for group-id: 2003 not found in the current source: FILES. 
Entry for group-id: 2003 not found in any of the available sources **[ 2] FAILURE: Unable to retrieve UNIX groupname for GID 2003

• The same error can also be observed against IP 0.0.0.0 when ONTAP is trying to resolve the user for its internal operations.

Thu Sep 03 01:59:58 +0900 [cluster-01: secd: secd.unixLookupFailure:error]: UNIXlookup failure on Vserver (svm) for client with IP address (0.0.0.0). 
Error: Acquire UNIX credentials procedure failed 
[ 7 ms] Entry for user-name: user1 not found in the current source: FILES. Entry for user-name: user1 not found in any of the available sources 
**[ 10] FAILURE: Unable to retrieve UID for UNIX user user1

• Validate in SECD log. Here, when quota creation is attempted but fails because user is not present in nameservice sources, the event failure is reported against 0.0.0.0

Example:

... Thu Sep 03 01:59:58 +0900 ... Worker Thread 34510782720 processing RPC205:secd_rpc_auth_user_name_to_id(caller: MGMT_QUOTA) with request ID:9322 whichsat in the queue for 0 seconds. { in run() atsrc/server/secd_rpc_server.cpp:2477 }

Note: Match timestamp and user to find applicable section in SECD.log and identify the related actions.

• The symptom here is related to an action initiated by the user user1 as per AUDIT-M log:

00000025.03650fbc 0733faaf Thu Sep 03 2026 01:59:58 +09:00[kern_audit:info:4391] 8003e80001504b25:8003e80001505641 :: Cluster-01:ssh ::10.10.10.1:52900 :: Cluster-01:admin :: volume quota policy rule create -vserversvm1 -policy-name default -volume nfs -type user -target user1 -qtree gold-soft-disk-limit 200MB -disk-limit 201MB :: Error: User name user1 not found.Reason: SecD Error: object not found.

Note: Timestamps, command and username correlate with EMS and SECD log entries.