Question

11

Why there are many guest accounts on my system?

rated 0 times [ 11] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 5550 / 2 Years ago, sun, december 26, 2021, 9:50:05

After I saw this answer, I realized that there are many guest accounts on my system:

grep guest /etc/passwd

guest-jzXeRx:x:117:127:Guest,,,:/tmp/guest-jzXeRx:/bin/false

guest-l5dAPU:x:118:128:Guest,,,:/tmp/guest-l5dAPU:/bin/false

guest-FdSAkw:x:119:129:Guest,,,:/tmp/guest-FdSAkw:/bin/false

guest-eBU0cU:x:121:131:Guest,,,:/tmp/guest-eBU0cU:/bin/false

Moreover, in this moment there is nobody logged as guest, but if somebody will login as guest, a new guest account is created - why, since there are already other guest accounts? After the new guest will log out, his account will be deleted. But why the other guest accounts remain? For what use/purpose?

It doesn't mind me at all this guest account, but I want to know if it is okay to delete them manually.

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ofunn

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Location: Liberia

Member since Fri, Oct 22, 2021

3 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago allally · Accepted Answer

The guest-XXXXXX entries in /etc/passwd and /etc/group are normally removed when you log out from a guest session. Maybe you have somehow rebooted a few times without logging out first.

You can safely delete the entries. If you do it like this:

sudo deluser guest-jzXeRx

for respective guest username, both /etc/passwd and /etc/group will be cleaned up.