System Administration Guide, Volume 2

Special Logins

There are two common ways to access a system--by using a conventional user login, or by using the root login. In addition, a number of special system logins allow a user to perform administrative commands without using the root account. The administrator assigns passwords to these login accounts.

The table below lists the system login accounts and their uses. The system logins perform special functions, and each has its own group identifier number (GID). Each of these logins should have its own password, which should be distributed on a need-to-know basis.

Table 16-3 System Logins

Login Account 

GID 

Use  

root

0

Has almost no restrictions and overrides all other logins, protections, and permissions. The root account has access to the entire system. The password for the root login should be very carefully protected. Owns most of the Solaris commands. 

daemon

1

Controls background processing.  

bin

2

Owns some of the Solaris commands. 

sys

3

Owns many system files.  

adm

4

Owns certain administrative files.  

lp

71

Owns the object and spooled data files for the printer. 

uucp

5

Owns the object and spooled data files for UUCP, the UNIX-to-UNIX copy program. 

nuucp

9

Is used by remote systems to log in to the system and start file transfers.  

You should also set the security of the eeprom command to require a password. See eeprom(1M) for more information.