On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 10:57:35AM +0000, Tom Browder wrote:
> In spite of its old age, I use the "Postfix" book by Kyle Dent for ease of
> basic reference. I am now stepping through configuration and I can't find
> whether the postfix commands should be executed as root or the postfix user.
>
> I think it should be as root, but would appreciate an expert opinion.
Because the Postfix system (master and some delivery agents) can
run commands under multiple user identities, Postfix management
requires root privileges, and most of the content of /etc/postfix
needs to be owned by root and not writable by any other user.
The "postfix" user is an unprivileged service account (think of it
as a Postfix-specific "nobody" account) used to run internal services
at low-privilege (optionally chrooted with root permissions revoked).
While it is possible to perform some tasks as "postfix", you're not
expected to use that account directly, it is used internally by
the Postfix system as appropriate.
--
Viktor.
