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USERS(7)            NetBSD Miscellaneous Information Manual           USERS(7)


NAME

     users -- standard user account names


DESCRIPTION

     A standard NetBSD installation has the following user account names:

     root      The super-user, uid 0, with the highest administrative privi-
               leges.  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 sec-
               ondary 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 dae-
               mon.

     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 ser-
               vice 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 adver-
               tisement 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 compro-
               mised 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.


SEE ALSO

     groups(7)

NetBSD 10.99                     April 2, 2020                    NetBSD 10.99