diff --git a/src/shared/userdb.c b/src/shared/userdb.c
index 3e08b339f5..33a1442460 100644
--- a/src/shared/userdb.c
+++ b/src/shared/userdb.c
@@ -510,7 +510,7 @@ static int userdb_start_query(
         }
 
         if (set_isempty(iterator->links))
-                return ret; /* propagate last error we saw if we couldn't connect to anything. */
+                return ret < 0 ? ret : -ESRCH; /* propagate last error we saw if we couldn't connect to anything. */
 
         /* We connected to some services, in this case, ignore the ones we failed on */
         return 0;