Strange guest users!!

[Paul Smith]

On Mon, 2012-07-02 at 13:34 -0700, Robert Holtzm wrote:
> My /etc/passwd file shows
> "nobody:x:65534:65534:nobody:/nonexistent:/bin/sh" which puzzels me. Any
> explanation?

Various parts of a UNIX system use UID 65534 to represent an "anonymous"
user.  For example, if your system is exporting filesystems via NFS
(Network File System), then when a root user on an NFS client that is
mounting your filesystem tries to access or create files on your
exported filesystem, their UID will be mapped to 65534 (by default).
This is just handy line in your /etc/passwd file so that if you run "ls"
you'll see that username as "nobody" instead of the numeric "65534".

It's harmless, please ignore.  Although why it has a shell of /bin/sh
instead of /bin/false or something similar, I'm not sure.  Most
certainly the account is locked (no valid password) anyway so it doesn't
really matter I guess.