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: m...@rs.com Web: www.rocketsoftware.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390