4 ms·

And to this day there is a mysterious 'bin' user on Linux systems that no one seems to use or know the purpose of. I wonder if another UNIX at some point added

• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• mananaysiempre 3y ago
  At least one old UNIX book of French origin described the “bin” user as the owner of the common binary files on the system.
  • jmclnx 3y ago
    Yes, that was what I remember. I think having bin own the binaries was a kind of security check for suids. Avoids having a suid on a root owned binary. Plus you could use bin to install programs instead of root. Restricting who has root access. But I suppose it did not work out as people were hoping and only added to admin costs. Still, I was a bit annoyed when I noticed everything was owned by root as opposed to bin when I first installed Slackware decades ago. But I got over it :)
• egberts1 3y ago
  used to be that a drum drive covered /bin and a platter drive provided /usr/bin. Makes upgrades easier when leaving SysV init alone (in /bin).