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
