sysusers.d
systemd
Developer
Lennart
Poettering
lennart@poettering.net
sysusers.d
5
sysusers.d
Declarative allocation of system users and groups
/etc/sysusers.d/*.conf
/run/sysusers.d/*.conf
/usr/lib/sysusers.d/*.conf
Description
systemd-sysusers uses the files from sysusers.d directory to create
system users and groups at package installation or boot time. This tool may be used to allocate system users and
groups only, it is not useful for creating non-system (i.e. regular, "human") users and groups, as it accesses
/etc/passwd and /etc/group directly, bypassing any more complex user
databases, for example any database involving NIS or LDAP.
Configuration Directories and Precedence
Each configuration file shall be named in the style of
package.conf or
package-part.conf.
The second variant should be used when it is desirable to make it
easy to override just this part of configuration.
Files in /etc/sysusers.d override files
with the same name in /usr/lib/sysusers.d and
/run/sysusers.d. Files in
/run/sysusers.d override files with the same
name in /usr/lib/sysusers.d. Packages should
install their configuration files in
/usr/lib/sysusers.d. Files in
/etc/sysusers.d are reserved for the local
administrator, who may use this logic to override the
configuration files installed by vendor packages. All
configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic
order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If
multiple files specify the same path, the entry in the file with
the lexicographically earliest name will be applied. All later
entries for the same user and group names will be logged as warnings.
If the administrator wants to disable a configuration file
supplied by the vendor, the recommended way is to place a symlink
to /dev/null in
/etc/sysusers.d/ bearing the same filename.
Configuration File Format
The file format is one line per user or group containing
name, ID, GECOS field description and home directory:
# Type Name ID GECOS
u httpd 440 "HTTP User"
u authd /usr/bin/authd "Authorization user"
g input - -
m authd input
u root 0 "Superuser" /root
Empty lines and lines beginning with the # character are ignored, and may be used for
commenting.
Type
The type consists of a single letter. The following line
types are understood:
u
Create a system user and group of the
specified name should they not exist yet. The user's primary
group will be set to the group bearing the same name. The
user's shell will be set to
/sbin/nologin, the home directory to
the specified home directory, or / if
none is given. The account will be created disabled, so that
logins are not allowed.
g
Create a system group of the specified name
should it not exist yet. Note that u
implicitly create a matching group. The group will be
created with no password set.
m
Add a user to a group. If the user or group
do not exist yet, they will be implicitly
created.
r
Add a range of numeric UIDs/GIDs to the pool
to allocate new UIDs and GIDs from. If no line of this type
is specified, the range of UIDs/GIDs is set to some
compiled-in default. Note that both UIDs and GIDs are
allocated from the same pool, in order to ensure that users
and groups of the same name are likely to carry the same
numeric UID and GID.
Name
The name field specifies the user or group name. The specified name must consist only of the characters a-z,
A-Z, 0-9, _ and -, except for the first character which must be one of a-z,
A-Z or _ (i.e. numbers and - are not permitted as first character). The
user/group name must have at least one character, and at most 31.
It is strongly recommended to pick user and group names that are unlikely to clash with normal users
created by the administrator. A good scheme to guarantee this is by prefixing all system and group names with the
underscore, and avoiding too generic names.
For m lines, this field should contain
the user name to add to a group.
For lines of type r, this field should
be set to -.
ID
For u and g, the
numeric 32-bit UID or GID of the user/group. Do not use IDs 65535
or 4294967295, as they have special placeholder meanings.
Specify - for automatic UID/GID allocation
for the user or group. Alternatively, specify an absolute path
in the file system. In this case, the UID/GID is read from the
path's owner/group. This is useful to create users whose UID/GID
match the owners of pre-existing files (such as SUID or SGID
binaries).
For m lines, this field should contain
the group name to add to a user to.
For lines of type r, this field should
be set to a UID/GID range in the format
FROM-TO, where both values are formatted as
decimal ASCII numbers. Alternatively, a single UID/GID may be
specified formatted as decimal ASCII numbers.
GECOS
A short, descriptive string for users to be created,
enclosed in quotation marks. Note that this field may not
contain colons.
Only applies to lines of type u and
should otherwise be left unset, or be set to
-.
Home Directory
The home directory for a new system user. If omitted,
defaults to the root directory. It is recommended to not
unnecessarily specify home directories for system users, unless
software strictly requires one to be set.
Only applies to lines of type u and
should otherwise be left unset, or be set to
-.
Idempotence
Note that systemd-sysusers will do
nothing if the specified users or groups already exist, so
normally, there is no reason to override
sysusers.d vendor configuration, except to
block certain users or groups from being created.
See Also
systemd1,
systemd-sysusers8