System Administration Guide

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 password to these login accounts.

Table 50-2 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 50-2 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.
`daemon`	`1`	Controls background processing.
`bin`	`2`	Owns most of the 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.