Accounts and Groups

[ee99ee2]

I was in Linuxconf the other day, and I was looking at all the different user accounts and groups. There are a TON that come by default. I run Mandrake 8, by the way, soon to be 8.1. I am just wanting to know what why I need all those accounts like backup, apache, DNS, nouser(!! :eek:!!), and so on. I mean, I could understand if I had someone that just did backups, and needed to log in as a backup user to do so, but I don't. I am the only user, maybe one more account, but that's about it. And all the different groups. Why do I need so many? Can I get rid of some?

One main reason why I'm asking this is becuase I'm installing ProFTPD and it uses the system accounts. I don't want people logging on with those accounts, especially if I don't need them. But even if I wasn't installing ProFTPD, why are they there, and why do I need them? :confused: :confused: :confused:

Thanks,

ee99ee2

[slacker_x]

Programs will run as different users. So apache might run as the apache user under the nogroup group. This is done so that if the security of one daemon is compromised, the attacker can't bring down the whole system (hopefully).

[ee99ee2]

Wow. That's very impresive. I didn't know that programs did that. So are there any accounts or groups that I probably don't need? I like to keep things like that as small as possable, so if I have to go back in and change something I can find it pretty quick.

-ee99ee2