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.
