On Fri, Sep 03, 2021 at 08:23:07AM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 03, 2021 at 08:03:23AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > Out of curiosity, I checked my system to see if there were any system
> > users with home directories under /home. The only one I found is "ntp".
> How old is your system? I just checked a machine that I initially as a
> Woody (3.0) system in 2001 and there is no ntp user directory under
> /home.
Well, you probably didn't install the ntp pacakge. ;-)
I *think* this system was installed as stretch, so I downloaded a stretch
package of ntp:
unicorn:~/tmp/x$ dpkg-deb -R ../ntp_4.2.8p10+dfsg-3+deb9u2_amd64.deb .
unicorn:~/tmp/x$ grep adduser DEBIAN/postinst
adduser --system --quiet --ingroup ntp --no-create-home ntp
I'm not 100% sure, but I think that creates a user with a home directory
under /home, even though it doesn't actually create that directory.
I also just fired up a fresh wheezy chroot and the ntp postinst
> has this:
>
> adduser --system --quiet --ingroup ntp --no-create-home ntp
>
> Did you perhaps modify your ntp config at a time when you might have
> been limited on space under /var?
... uh, I don't think so?
Let's test this sucker and find out:
unicorn:~/tmp/x$ sudo adduser --system --quiet --ingroup ntp --no-create-home
zzntp
unicorn:~/tmp/x$ grep zzntp /etc/passwd
zzntp:x:115:112::/home/zzntp:/usr/sbin/nologin
As I guessed. That's what it did.
