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Date:      Sat, 26 Aug 2000 13:59:47 +0100
From:      Mark Ovens <marko@freebsd.org>
To:        Alex Charalabidis <alex@wnm.net>
Cc:        youlgok@attglobal.net, FreeBSD-Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: [Q] USER nobody
Message-ID:  <20000826135947.D254@parish>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0008260414220.3837-100000@earth.wnm.net>; from alex@wnm.net on Sat, Aug 26, 2000 at 04:20:03AM -0500
References:  <39A776DA.8BBA7153@attglobal.net> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0008260414220.3837-100000@earth.wnm.net>

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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/
> ==============================================================
> 
> 
> 
> 
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