There are suddenly a number of strange users on my system, with names like “mysql”, “pgsql”, and “games”. Where did they come from?
You have used Fink to install a package which is dependent on another package, passwd. passwd installs a number of extra users on your system for security reasons — on Unix systems, files and processes belong to “owners”, which allows system administrators to fine-tune the permissions and security of the system. Programs such as Apache and MySQL need an “owner”, and it is insecure to assign these daemons to root (imagine what would happen if Apache were to be compromised and suddenly had write permission to all files on the system). Thus, the passwd package takes the work out of setting up these extra users for Fink packages that require this. It can be alarming to discover suddenly a number of unexpected users in your “System Preferences: Users” pane (on 10.2.x) or “System Preferences: Accounts” pane (on 10.3.x), but suppress the urge to delete them: • First of all, you have obviously chosen to install a package which requires their use, so deleting the user doesn’t make much sense,
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