[TriLUG] more about /etc/passwd contents

[Mike Mueller]

Here's a lot of information about users and groups that are statically 
defined that I have not found elsewhere so far:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2001/debian-user-200108/msg00993.html

I got an interesting history lesson here:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2002/debian-user-200209/msg02292.html

The shutdown user on my Mandark system is still a mystery.  I purposely 
corrupted the shutdown user entry in /etc/passwd and I successfully executed 
the shutdown command as a non-root user.  My RH7.3 has a shutdown user but 
there is no consolehelper symb. link (/user/bin/shutdown) to /sbin/shutdown. 
On the 7.3 system you must be root to run shutdown.  The shutdown user seems 
to have no use.  <cagerattle>There is fair evidence that the folks at RedHat 
are responsible for consolehelper and possibly for creating the static user 
shutdown.</cagerattle>
-- 
mueller, mike