I noticed after upgrading from Mageia 7 to 8, I now have a new user
called "esc", should that be there, and can I delete it?

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On 2021-07-08, Ar <Ar@127.0.0.1> wrote:

I noticed after upgrading from Mageia 7 to 8, I now have a new user
called "esc", should that be there, and can I delete it?

I have no such user.

find / -user esc
will show which files on the system are owned by esc. That will give you
an idea if you can delete it.
You can find what package they come from and what rpm package they are
owned by and what that package does
rpm -qilf </path/to/file>


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On Thu, 8 Jul 2021 09:22:54 +0100, Ar wrote:

I noticed after upgrading from Mageia 7 to 8, I now have a new user
called "esc", should that be there,

I always do clean install so I can say it is not created.

and can I delete it?

You are the system administrator so you can do whatever you like.
Anytime you dink with user, you need to stop and think about what you
are wanting to do and its ramifications.

In this case, deleting "esc" may leave files no longer owned by the
deleted user. Same kind of problem can occur when deleting a group.

First thing to do is verify you do not already have that problem. As root,
find / -path /proc -prune -o -user nobody -o -group nogroup
Then check for stuff by the user.
find / -path /proc -prune -o -user esc -o -group esc

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On Thu, 08 Jul 2021 04:22:54 -0400, Ar <Ar@127.0.0.1> wrote:

I noticed after upgrading from Mageia 7 to 8, I now have a new user
called "esc", should that be there, and can I delete it?

What does "grep esc /etc/passwd" show? Usually system accounts will use a comment
in the name field to indicate what function the user is for.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
email replies.

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On 08/07/2021 17:08, David W. Hodgins wrote:

I noticed after upgrading from Mageia 7 to 8, I now have a new user
called "esc", should that be there, and can I delete it?

What does "grep esc /etc/passwd" show? Usually system accounts will use
a comment
in the name field to indicate what function the user is for.

Interesting command.. which gives the result.

esc:x:1002:1002:<Esc>:/home/esc:/bin/bash

I'm wondering it it is an old "test" user account I deleted before the
Mageia 8 install, I asked mcc to delete everything about the test user,
but "esc" wasn't their name, which is weird.

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On 08/07/2021 14:36, Bit Twister wrote:

On Thu, 8 Jul 2021 09:22:54 +0100, Ar wrote:

I noticed after upgrading from Mageia 7 to 8, I now have a new user
called "esc", should that be there,

I always do clean install so I can say it is not created.

It's what I normally do, but this time I wanted to test the inline
update, as someone has to test it out on a real machine.

and can I delete it?

You are the system administrator so you can do whatever you like.

A fair point, but I was more concerned if I rm -fr the account, if
there's some sort of symlink to something, will it delete the original
files it's linking to? I'm not 100% on symlinks - very wary of them.

In this case, deleting "esc" may leave files no longer owned by the
deleted user. Same kind of problem can occur when deleting a group.

First thing to do is verify you do not already have that problem. As root,
find / -path /proc -prune -o -user nobody -o -group nogroup
Then check for stuff by the user.
find / -path /proc -prune -o -user esc -o -group esc

The latter an interesting command, it deleted stuff and right at the end
it deleted a file with the old test account name I had set up. So for
some strange reason, when I asked MCC to to delete the old test account,
it didn't do a clean job of it.

Thanks for your help, mystery solved on what that new user was.

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On 08/07/2021 12:59, William Unruh wrote:

On 2021-07-08, Ar <Ar@127.0.0.1> wrote:

I noticed after upgrading from Mageia 7 to 8, I now have a new user
called "esc", should that be there, and can I delete it?

I have no such user.

find / -user esc
will show which files on the system are owned by esc. That will give you
an idea if you can delete it.
You can find what package they come from and what rpm package they are
owned by and what that package does
rpm -qilf </path/to/file>

It appears it was the remains of a test user account, that MCC did not
100% cleanly delete.

Thanks for your helpful suggestion.

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On 2021-07-08, Ar <Ar@127.0.0.1> wrote:

On 08/07/2021 14:36, Bit Twister wrote:

On Thu, 8 Jul 2021 09:22:54 +0100, Ar wrote:

I noticed after upgrading from Mageia 7 to 8, I now have a new user
called "esc", should that be there,

I always do clean install so I can say it is not created.

It's what I normally do, but this time I wanted to test the inline
update, as someone has to test it out on a real machine.

and can I delete it?

You are the system administrator so you can do whatever you like.

A fair point, but I was more concerned if I rm -fr the account, if
there's some sort of symlink to something, will it delete the original
files it's linking to? I'm not 100% on symlinks - very wary of them.

Nope it removes the soft link. A soft link is a file just like anything
else on the filesystem. If you ask it to remove that link name it
removes that file which is the link. It does not touch the file that
link points to.

In this case, deleting "esc" may leave files no longer owned by the
deleted user. Same kind of problem can occur when deleting a group.

First thing to do is verify you do not already have that problem. As root, >> find / -path /proc -prune -o -user nobody -o -group nogroup
Then check for stuff by the user.
find / -path /proc -prune -o -user esc -o -group esc

The latter an interesting command, it deleted stuff and right at the end

No it did not delete stuff, or if it did then there is something
seriously wrong with your "find" command. It simply listed the files
which complied with the conditions.

(start in / directory, if it finds a path /proc, then stop descending
that directory tree (prune). If it finds a file owned by a user named esc or a group
named esc then print out those file names.)

it deleted a file with the old test account name I had set up. So for

It did NOT delete anything. It simply listed the names of files which
met the condition.

If it listed files from the test accound name then it was because they
were owned by esc or belonged to the group exc.

some strange reason, when I asked MCC to to delete the old test account,
it didn't do a clean job of it.

Thanks for your help, mystery solved on what that new user was.

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On 7/8/21 12:53 PM, Ar wrote:

I always do clean install so I can say it is not created.

It's what I normally do, but this time I wanted to test the inline
update, as someone has to test it out on a real machine.

By "inline" I assume you mean through the applet that was appearing on
your Mageia 7 install.

Be aware that before that applet was activated, and after, the upgrade
process was tested on real hardware several times by Mageia's QA team.

However, such upgrade tests can only tell us so much, because every
existing system is unique with regard to hardware, what customization
has been done by the user and/or administrator, and which packages have
been installed. It is impossible for QA to test every combination that
is possible.

TJ

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