users
— standard
user account names
A standard NetBSD installation has the
following user account names:
- 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.