On Tuesday 03 November 2009 11:48, Marcy Cortes wrote:
>No one has actually answered Paul's question about why it has to exist. I'm
> curious about that too for my own edification. Just because its always
> been there and things *might* expect it isn't a very good reason in my
> opinion.
I'll take a swat at that one:
It doesn't *have* to exist, but some packages will attempt to install files
owned by "games". That's OK, you'll end up with some files owned by UID 12.
No big deal unless you've modified /etc/login.defs, or explicitly create a
user account with that UID, or installed some games. :-)
If you're curious to see just what files are owned by "games" on your system,
run this command:
rpm -ql --dump -a | awk '$6 == "games" || $7 == "games" {print $1}'
On my system, I get exactly one file: /var/games. Just an empty directory.
I think removing the "games" user is a no-brainer, and it isn't going to cause
any problems. If you somehow do manage to install a package that has files
owned by "games" later on, your security scanner cron job should report it to
you.
Oh: I ran the above command for the "ftp" user and group too: no output at
all. Of course, I don't have a lot of junk installed on this instance. It's
supposed to be a server, after all.
- MacK.
-----
Edmund R. MacKenty
Software Architect
Rocket Software
275 Grove Street · Newton, MA 02466-2272 · USA
Tel: +1.617.614.4321
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.rocketsoftware.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
