Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2000 03:43:19 -0500 (CDT) From: Alex Charalabidis <alex@wnm.net> To: Mark Ovens <marko@freebsd.org> Cc: youlgok@attglobal.net, FreeBSD-Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: [Q] USER nobody Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0008270339350.3837-100000@earth.wnm.net> In-Reply-To: <20000826135947.D254@parish>
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On Sat, 26 Aug 2000, Mark Ovens wrote: > On Sat, Aug 26, 2000 at 04:20:03AM -0500, Alex Charalabidis wrote: > > On Sat, 26 Aug 2000 youlgok@attglobal.net wrote: > > > > > I commanded this while the hard disk drive is suddenly moveing so fast : > > > ps -aux > > > and there's "USER nobody" on the list and it runs several processes > > > including su. > > > What is this USER nobody? Is this normal or someone's hacking my > > > computer? When I > > > command w or who, it displays only me. I'm the only user. > > > > > User nobody is a special user, used mostly with programs that need only > > minimal privileges on the machine. The 'su' means that something is su'ed > > TO nobody and not that 'nobody' is su'ing to another user. Can't really > > tell what might be going on, you're not giving us enough info to work > > with. Show us some of the processes and let us know what services the > > machine is running. > > > > /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate which rebuilds the locate(1) database > runs as user ``nobody'' (and, as you would expect, generates a lot of > disk activity). It runs at 3:30 every Saturday, which looking at the > time of your post, suggests that is what was running. > A lucid answer if there ever was one. I'm so used to hearing the drive spin, thinking "it's <insert time>" and paying no more attention that I quite forgot that possibility. :) -ac -- ============================================================== Alex Charalabidis (AC8139) 5050 Poplar Ave, Ste 170 Systems Administrator Memphis, TN 38157 WebNet Memphis (901) 432 6000 Author, The Book of IRC http://www.bookofirc.com/ ============================================================== To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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