From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Aug 26 6: 0:14 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mta06-svc.ntlworld.com (mta06-svc.ntlworld.com [62.253.162.46]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CA1D537B424 for ; Sat, 26 Aug 2000 06:00:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from parish.my.domain ([62.255.97.96]) by mta06-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.02.27 201-229-119-110) with ESMTP id <20000826130007.KTXL312.mta06-svc.ntlworld.com@parish.my.domain>; Sat, 26 Aug 2000 14:00:07 +0100 Received: (from mark@localhost) by parish.my.domain (8.9.3/8.9.3) id NAA01790; Sat, 26 Aug 2000 13:59:48 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from mark) Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 13:59:47 +0100 From: Mark Ovens To: Alex Charalabidis Cc: youlgok@attglobal.net, FreeBSD-Questions Subject: Re: [Q] USER nobody Message-ID: <20000826135947.D254@parish> References: <39A776DA.8BBA7153@attglobal.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from alex@wnm.net on Sat, Aug 26, 2000 at 04:20:03AM -0500 Organization: Total lack of Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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. > -ac > > -- > ============================================================== > Alex Charalabidis (AC8139) 5050 Poplar Ave, Ste 170 > System 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 -- 4.4 - The number of the Beastie ________________________________________________________________ 51.44°N FreeBSD - The Power To Serve http://www.freebsd.org 2.057°W My Webpage http://ukug.uk.freebsd.org/~mark mailto:marko@freebsd.org http://www.radan.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message