Re: Who is 'nobody'?
On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 08:57:11PM +0100, Stephan Kulka wrote:
> > > Who is this "nobody"?
> > 'nobody' is a 'system' user. User 'nobody' should never ever have ANY files
> > in the filesystem (if it does, that's probably a security hole), and should
> > be used by daemons and the like that need only read access to files that are
> > readable by all users.
> Is it therefore necessary that 'nobody' has an enty in the passwd file??
Yes, the kernel knows nothing about user names, only numbers. The entries
in /etc/password are what programs use to map UIDs to user names (this is
why /etc/password must be world readable and why shadow passwords came into
existence.) If 'nobody' was not listed in /etc/password su (or any other
program) would be able to figure out what UID to change to.
--
Harry Henry Gebel, ICQ# 76308382
West Dover Hundred, Delaware
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