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
    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.

SEE ALSO
groups(7)