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 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
    User in the operator group authorized to take snapshots of file systems, read disk devices, read and write tapes, and shut down the machine; see groups(7) for details.

    Not used directly in NetBSD but available for unprivileged backup setups.

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.

SEE ALSO
groups(7) Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels, Samuel J. Leffler, Mike Hibler, Installing and Operating 4.4BSD UNIX, May 14, 1994, /usr/share/doc/smm/setup.