Remove "debian-sys-maint" Account?

I am using Debian 'Squeeze' / Testing on with MySQL 5.1.41-3
installed. It is a fresh install and I was checking all the system
accounts and noticed that Debian has a 'debian-sys-maint' account on
'localhost'. Has anyone ever removed this account? Do I need it or can
I safely remove this account? I don't understand why it's there. I
don't want to break MySQL even though there is no data or databases on
this machine but I would like to keep this as clean as possible.

Thanks for any input.

-Carlos

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Re: Remove "debian-sys-maint" Account?

Hi Carlos,

The debian-sys-maint account is used for two things that I am aware of:

1) the /etc/init.d/mysql stop command uses it to perform a controlled
shutdown of MySQL.

2) on execution of /etc/init.d/mysql start, it uses this account to run
a CHECK TABLE on all of your tables

The first function is quite handy, the second is downright annoying,
especially if you have any large tables, as these will take a long time
to check.

There is a way of stopping it from performing the table check without
disabling the maintenance account, but I can't remember it off-hand.

Thanks

On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 13:15 -0500, Carlos Williams wrote:
> I am using Debian 'Squeeze' / Testing on with MySQL 5.1.41-3
> installed. It is a fresh install and I was checking all the system
> accounts and noticed that Debian has a 'debian-sys-maint' account on
> 'localhost'. Has anyone ever removed this account? Do I need it or can
> I safely remove this account? I don't understand why it's there. I
> don't want to break MySQL even though there is no data or databases on
> this machine but I would like to keep this as clean as possible.
>
> Thanks for any input.
>
> -Carlos
>


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Ian Simpson
System Administrator
MyJobGroup


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Re: Remove "debian-sys-maint" Account?

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Hi ALL,

You will find all the details you need to set up debian-sys-maint account
under /etc/mysql/debian.cnf

GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, RELOAD, SHUTDOWN,
PROCESS, FILE, REFERENCES, INDEX, ALTER, SHOW DATABASES, SUPER, CREATE
TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES, EXECUTE, REPLICATION SLAVE, REPLICATION
CLIENT ON *.* TO 'debian-sys-maint'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD
'password' WITH GRANT OPTION
Regards,
Igor

BTW, this is my First post.

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Carlos Williams wrote:

> I am using Debian 'Squeeze' / Testing on with MySQL 5.1.41-3
> installed. It is a fresh install and I was checking all the system
> accounts and noticed that Debian has a 'debian-sys-maint' account on
> 'localhost'. Has anyone ever removed this account? Do I need it or can
> I safely remove this account? I don't understand why it's there. I
> don't want to break MySQL even though there is no data or databases on
> this machine but I would like to keep this as clean as possible.
>
> Thanks for any input.
>
> -Carlos
>
> --
> MySQL General Mailing List
> For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql
> To unsubscribe:
> http://lists.mysql.com/mysql?unsub=nixofortune@googlemail.co m
>
>

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Re: Remove "debian-sys-maint" Account?

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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Carlos Williams wrote:

> I am using Debian 'Squeeze' / Testing on with MySQL 5.1.41-3
> installed. It is a fresh install and I was checking all the system
> accounts and noticed that Debian has a 'debian-sys-maint' account on
> 'localhost'. Has anyone ever removed this account? Do I need it or can
> I safely remove this account? I don't understand why it's there. I
> don't want to break MySQL even though there is no data or databases on
> this machine but I would like to keep this as clean as possible.
>

As Ian already indicated, this is an administrative account used by Debian
for the system operations they do. It'll probably also be used when you
upgrade packages and similar things.

I would recommend that you keep it, as it's only there for localhost anyway,
and the credentials are in /etc/mysql/debian.cnf with restricted
readability.

I also tend to use those credentials for any maintenance scripts I run
myself, so in that way it actually prevents clutter for me :-)



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Bier met grenadyn
Is als mosterd by den wyn
Sy die't drinkt, is eene kwezel
Hy die't drinkt, is ras een ezel

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