Why is a user created when creating a share

[schultzter]

I'm trying to do some clean-up on my home computers, and I noticed on my ReadyNas Duo v1 (RAIDiator 4.1.14) that for every share I've created a corresponding user has been created.

However the shares are owned by nobody:nogroup so what's the point of creating those users?

Since my computers are all Linux machines I use NFS, so that means UID and GUID have to be synchronized, and having these users created in the background (for no apparent reason) makes it difficult to keep everything in order.

Can I just delete those users? What is their purpose if they don't own the share?

Thanks,

[EskenderNG]

Hello,

looking at a 4.2.x device here I also see a user for every share created. This users belongs to the group with GID 65534. I do not know why the ReadyNAS needs these users. However, noticing that this is a system group with other users in this group related to backup and access I would refrain from deleting the users created with shares.

Bye,
Eskender

[mdgm-ntgr]

It would prevent you from creating a user with that username on the NAS. If you created a user with the same name as a share it would cause config issues as you couldn't have a private home share with the same name as the ordinary share.

I agree with EskenderNG. I would not delete the user.

[StephenB]

mdgm wrote:
It would prevent you from creating a user with that username on the NAS. If you created a user with the same name as a share it would cause config issues as you couldn't have a private home share with the same name as the ordinary share. I agree with EskenderNG. I would not delete the user.

The approach might also go back to the days of share security mode. I wouldn't delete them either.

Though I am not understanding how they complicate your life, since you don't need to create matching users on any other machine.

[schultzter]

Thanks everyone, those answers make sense.

StephenB wrote:
I am not understanding how they complicate your life, since you don't need to create matching users on any other machine.

They're not easily visible through the web interface, so I don't know which UID's they are occupying unless I telnet into the NAS and look at the passwd file.

[schultzter]

I've also noticed the link from the root to the share is owned by the named owner, but the actually directory is owned by nobody (except media - what's up with that?)! The link is what is exported (for NFS) and bind-mounted (for FTP).

Link from root of file system:

lrwxrwxrwx    1 backup   users           9 Jul  8  2008 backup -> /c/backup
lrwxrwxrwx    1 document users          12 Sep  7  2008 documents -> /c/documents
lrwxrwxrwx    1 media    users           8 Jul  8  2008 media -> /c/media

Actual directory in /c volume:

drwxrwsr-x   12 nobody   users       16384 Feb 26 21:30 backup
drwxrwsr-x    8 nobody   users       16384 Oct  5  2013 documents
drwxrwsr-x    8 media    users       16384 Aug 22  2014 media

NFS exports

"/backup" 123.123.123.0/255.255.255.0(insecure,insecure_locks,rw,async)
"/documents" 123.123.123.0/255.255.255.0(insecure,insecure_locks,rw,async)
"/media" *(insecure,insecure_locks,ro,async) 123.123.123.0/255.255.255.0(insecure,insecure_locks,rw,async)

FTP mounts

/backup            /home/ftp/backup     bind       bind              0      0
/documents         /home/ftp/documents  bind       bind              0      0
/media             /home/ftp/media      bind       bind              0      0

I wonder if that is relevant, or if the link could just as easily be owned by nobody or root?