Remove of Default User accounts

[Chris Fung]

Dear all,

Is it possible for me to delete those Unix default accounts namely (daemon, guest, ftp , uucp, lp and nobody etc) in the password file ??

I know that those accounts are not allowed to be accessed through login by default. Just wondering whether they are really required for normal operation of the Unix machine.

Appreciated it if anyone can send me related documents and links for the real usage of those default user accounts above-mentioned

Many Thanks,

Chris,

[Jeffrey S. Sims · Accepted solution]

Chris,

Whether you can remove these accounts depends on what services you are running.

uucp - this is sued by the UUCP system for transferring files and electronic mail between UNIX computers connected by telephone.

daemon - is often used for network utilities

bin and sys - are used for system files

lp is used for the line printer system

ftp is used for ftp obviously.

So in summary if you do not use uucp or ftp or line printer etc you can safely remove these accounts. I would change the shell to /bin/false after adding it to /etc/shells file and see if you have any problems with services you might not have realized you were using.

Hope it helps.