"Schäfer, Axel" <a.schaefer@uwt.mb.uni-siegen.de> wrote:

Since some days I happen to find the following line in my messages-file:

Dec 13 06:53:31 snooker su: (to nobody) root on none

The funny thing is, that this happens every day exactly at 06:53! I am totally goofed by this thing - have no idea.

This is a cron job which is installed by default. When executing updatedb (to update the locate database) it switches to user nobody. This is normal and is done to ensure that only files in world readable directories are included in the database. Files in directories with read permission for owner and group only will not appear in the database, because nobody can't read this directories. Otherwise locate would give every user the ability to get the names of files in directories which he can't read. Eilert -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eilert Brinkmann -- Universitaet Bremen -- FB 3, Informatik eilert@informatik.uni-bremen.de - eilert@tzi.org - eilert@linuxfreak.com http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~eilert/