Carlos Mennens writes: > I never installed Apache so why would there be a '/var/www' directory > or for that matter a 'www-data' user in '/etc/passwd'? So that if you ever do install Apache or any other Web server it will get UID 33 and GID 33. The entries you are complaining about are placeholders. The idea is to standardize the UIDs of the various system users. See section 9.2 of the Debian Policy manual. -- John Hasler