Re: exploring debian's users and groups
Aaron Lehmann wrote:
> (oh no, a crosspost)
Oh no, someone who ignored my reply-to. BTW, your email address is
broken, but you knew that..
> On Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 01:35:48AM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > The man program (sometimes) runs as user man, so it can write cat
> > pages to /var/cache/man
> >
> > HELP: My system has no files owned by user man, and I don't see
> > the point of the user, aside from symmetry.
>
> The man program (sometimes) runs as user man, so it can write cat
> pages to /var/cache/man.
Right, I think I meant to say it's group man that is not used here and
seems to have no purpose.
> > majordom:
> >
> > Majordomo has a statically allocated uid on Debian systems for
> > historical reasons.
> >
> > HELP: Do we still even ship that buggy old POS?
>
> Not if apt-cache is behaving itself today.
So why's it still in the password file on every debian box?
> > postgres:
> >
> > HELP: Presumably used by the postgresql database?
> >
> > www-data:
> >
> > HELP: Er, I should know this, but this box doesn't run apache and
> > I'm offline.
>
> Used by apache as the user/group, typically is the user/group that
> owns web content.
Apache runs as user/group www-data, so I think you *don't* want www-data
to own web content, or yout apache server could mess with it if
compromised.
So why does apache use www-data instead of say, nobody? Ah, I'll bet
it's so that any data apache writes out, like log files, are owned by a
non-nobody user. Yes, that's it.
--
see shy jo
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