System Accounts

["R. Bradley Tilley" <rtilley@vt.edu>]

Hello,

I am experimenting with a Debian system to be used as a firewall/gateway. I am 
using Debian 3.0 with the 2.4.18 kernel. I did a basic install selecting the 
Unix server task. Just wondering why there are so many accounts with shell 
access installed by default? 

games, irc, news, gnats, lp, uucp, operator, backup, etc.

For security reasons, I would like to remove these accounts, but I don't 
understand how the system uses them, or if it uses them at all. Can someone 
explain this? Also, what are the bare minimum accounts? 

Thank you,
Brad