Newbie question about user bin,daemon, etc

[keita_mog]

Hi everyone!

I have a newbie doubt, checking the /etc/passwd file from my server (SuSE 10 SP1), there are various system users like bin, daaemon, ftp, games, man, among others, but I'm seeing that they have /bin/bash as their command shell.

Looking at the /etc/shadow, I noticed that all of them have an * in their encrypted password, meaning, as I understand, that their logon procedure should be disabled.

The question is, what's the point to have a command/shell to /bin/bash if they can't login? Is there any reason to not put /bin/false instead?

Thanks in advance

[atreyu]

That is a good question - on my system, all such accounts, like yours, have * in their encrypted password in shadow, but they have /sbin/nologin for their shells.