USERS(7)

✨ NAME ✨

users — standard user account names. This is the USERS(7) page, bestie. 💖

🫶 DESCRIPTION 🫶

Okay so a standard NetBSD installation has the following user account names, and we are going through every single one:

• root — the super-user, uid 0, with the highest administrative privileges. Normally not used for login directly, only via su(1) or equivalent by users in the wheel group; see groups(7).
  • Secondary groups: guest, kmem, nvmm, operator, staff, sys, tty.
• toor — like root, this is the super-user with uid 0, but with no secondary group memberships.
  • Historically, root had a login shell of /bin/csh while toor had a login shell of /bin/sh. However, today both default to /bin/sh. This user account name is not used for anything in NetBSD; it is purely a convenience for actual users.
• daemon — historic user for general daemonic activity. Owner of /var/msgs; see msgs(1). Used only by rpcbind(8), with the -s flag.
• operator — historic user. Unused in modern NetBSD.
• bin — historic user. Unused in modern NetBSD.
• games — owner of high-score files and other shared files for games.
• postfix — pseudo-user for use by the postfix(1) mail transfer agent.
• named — pseudo-user for use by the named(8) DNS nameserver daemon.
• ntpd — pseudo-user for use by the ntpd(8) network time protocol daemon.
• sshd — pseudo-user for use by the sshd(8) secure shell daemon.
• _pflogd — pseudo-user for use by the pflogd(8) log daemon with the pf(4) packet filter.
• _rwhod — pseudo-user for use by the rwhod(8) system status daemon.
• _proxy — pseudo-user for use by the ftp-proxy(8) and tftp-proxy(8) proxy daemons with packet filters such as pf(4) or ipnat(4).
• _timedc — pseudo-user for use by the timedc(8) tool to communicate with the timed(8) time server daemon.
• _sdpd — pseudo-user for use by the sdpd(8) Bluetooth service discovery protocol daemon.
• _httpd — pseudo-user for use by the httpd(8) (bozohttpd) web server.
• _mdnsd — pseudo-user for use by the mdnsd(8) multicast DNS and DNS service discovery daemon.
• _tests — pseudo-user for use by atf(7) automatic tests that request to run unprivileged. Default value for the unprivileged-user configuration variable; see tests(7).
• _tcpdump — pseudo-user for use by the tcpdump(8) network traffic dumper and analyzer.
• _tss — pseudo-user for use by the tcsd(8) “Trusted Computing” daemon TPM to manage a TPM.
• _dhcpcd — pseudo-user for use by the dhcpcd(8) DHCP Client Daemon.
• _rtadvd — pseudo-user for use by the rtadvd(8) IPv6 network router advertisement daemon.
• _unbound — pseudo-user for the unbound(8) recursive DNS resolver.
• _nsd — pseudo-user for the nsd(8) authoritative DNS nameserver.
• uucp — pseudo-user for use by historic UUCP software, available now in pkgsrc(7).
• nobody — traditional pseudo-user used for dropping privileges. Modern practice is to assign to each different daemon its own separate pseudo-user account and group so that if one daemon is compromised it does not compromise all the other daemons.

All new standard NetBSD pseudo-user account names should begin with an underscore _ to distinguish them from accounts that real users might add, and should have a primary group of the same name; real users should accordingly avoid such account names. Periodt. 💅

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• groups(7)

Source/version and date check: Debian, April 2, 2020 — USERS(7) and out. 💖💅