Should /nonexistent home dir actually exist?

[Andrew Boothman]

George Hartzell wrote:

> I just noticed 
> 
>   a) that several accounts (from ports stuff, it seems) on a -stable
>      system use /nonexistent as their home directory
> 
>        (ghost)[9:50am]log>>grep nonexist /etc/passwd 
>        pop:*:68:6:Post Office Owner:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
>        www:*:80:80:World Wide Web Owner:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
>        nobody:*:65534:65534:Unprivileged user:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
>        gdm:*:92:92:GNOME Display Manager:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
>        dnslog:*:1002:1002:DJBdns Logger:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
>        dnscache:*:1003:1003:DJBdns Cache owner:/nonexistent:/sbin/nlogin
>        stunnel:*:1004:1004:stunnel Daemon:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
>        cyrus:*:60:60:the cyrus mail server:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
>        ldap:*:389:389:OpenLDAP Server:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
> 
> and
> 
>   b) that it seems to exist....
> 
>        (ghost)[9:50am]log>>ls -la /nonexistent/
>        total 20
>        drwxr-xr-x   2 ftp     ftp     512 Jun  1  2003 .
>        drwxr-xr-x  20 root    wheel   512 Jan 15 12:07 ..
>        -rw-r--r--   1 dnslog  dnslog  771 Jun  1  2003 .cshrc
>        -rw-r--r--   1 dnslog  dnslog  255 Jun  1  2003 .login
>        -rw-r--r--   1 dnslog  dnslog  165 Jun  1  2003 .login_conf
>        -rw-------   1 dnslog  dnslog  371 Jun  1  2003 .mail_aliases
>        -rw-r--r--   1 dnslog  dnslog  331 Jun  1  2003 .mailrc
>        -rw-r--r--   1 dnslog  dnslog  801 Jun  1  2003 .profile
>        -rw-------   1 dnslog  dnslog  276 Jun  1  2003 .rhosts
>        -rw-r--r--   1 dnslog  dnslog  852 Jun  1  2003 .shrc
> 
> The name suggests that it shouldn't actually exist, presumably as a
> security measure.
> 
> Should I leave it as is, blow away the /nonexistent homedir, is it a
> ports problem, or ???

/nonexistent is not supposed to exist.

Perhaps you added the dnslog user using adduser(8) and so the home 
directory was created?

Andrew