First,
Thank you to the 4 who replied:
Charlie Mengler
Kevin Sheehan
Casper Dik (Response #2)
Arthur Darren Dunham (Response #1)
The following 2 messages summarize my findings ...
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>
> Sun Managers,
>
> Recently I discovered that the "smtp" user in Solaris 2.6 has a UID of
> 0, even after applying all recommended security patches. I checked the
> archives thinking this must be a common question - could not find one. I
> know sendmail is a root owned setuid program which would indicate that
smtp
> could have a UID separate from 0. Surely Solaris and/or sendmail does not
> need to have a pseudo root user "smtp" to work properly, or does it ????
Yes.
Only a root process can bind to port 25 for incoming mail.
Only a root process can change to other users for placing mail into
their inbox.
Once incoming mail is determined to be for a particular user, sendmail
will attempt to change to that user for further delivery. The main
sendmail process normally just sits around as UID 0 though.
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I don't think it does any harm, as it's a disabled account.
You can safely remove it, though, as Sun did in Solaris 7
(I grepped the source and couldn't find a single use of "smtp")
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Thanks again,
John Hilger
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:13:17 CDT