Re: Bitlbee user
On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 10:10:50AM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2023-01-17 at 09:49, Richmond wrote:
>
> > Why is there a user called bitlbee on my system (nologin) when
> > bitlbee is not installed?
> >
> > Also there is a user saned but sane is not installed.
>
> At a guess: because those packages were installed at some point in the
> past.
>
> Typically, when a package creates a user for its programs to run as,
> that user is not removed or otherwise cleaned up when the package is
> removed. The reason is that the filesystem may still contain files or
> directories which are owned by that user, and if the user were removed,
> the record of who owned those files or directories would be lost; they
> would show up as owned only by the numeric UID/GID, with no record
> remaining of who those IDs corresponded to.
Even worse: if that UID gets recycled, and assigned to a new user, for
a new package, then the leftover files would suddenly be owned by the
new package's user.
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