[Mageia-dev] halt and shutdown users: Still needed?

[rihoward1 at gmail.com]

On Sep 9, 2012, at 3:10 AM, Julien wrote:

> Le Sun, 09 Sep 2012 12:55:17 +0300,
> Sander Lepik <sander.lepik at eesti.ee> a écrit :
> 
>> 08.09.2012 19:49, Colin Guthrie kirjutas:
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> So there exists two users (provided by default from the setup pkg)
>>> called "halt" and "shutdown". These users just run the halt and shutdown
>>> commands as their shell. This means su'ing or sudo'ing or setting a
>>> password and logging in as them, will shut the machine down.
>>> 
>>> This seems like a relic from many years ago and there is no need to
>>> include such users in this day and age. Should we kill them off?
>>> 
>>> Col
>>> 
>> +1 on removing them. I didn't even know about them :)
>> 
>> --
>> Sander
>> 
> 
> The same for me, didn't know they existed.
> 
> Julien


- 1
Removing them is a really bad idea.  It violates fundamental security principles. 
There is a reason processes are run with their user permissions.