[sclug] Non-human user IDs

[Will Dickson]

Richard A Downing <richard.downing at bcs.org.uk> writes:

'nobody' is usually set up without a shell, and minimal permissions so that it 
can be used a the default user for things like a web server, eg apache.
'daemon' is similar for the daemons, but I often just use 'nobody'.

My nobody account from /etc/passwd looks like this:

nobody:x:999:100::/dev/null:/bin/false

/dev/null is the home directory (hence there isn't one)
/bin/false is the shell (hence one doesn't start when 'nobody' logs in, so no 
commands can be initiated).

-- 
Cheers, Richard.
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Richard A Downing FBCS
http://homepage.dtn.ntl.com/richard.downing/
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[forwarded w/ permission.]