root processes?

[niclas197]

Hey,

this is just a quick question. I've noticed that almost all FreeNAS processes run as root.

PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND
2269 root 1 76 0 33948K 3904K sbwait 1 7:06 32.28% afpd
1483 root 1 70 0 11780K 2768K RUN 0 4:10 19.29% ntpd
1783 avahi 1 55 0 16932K 2832K CPU1 0 2:33 11.87% avahi-daemo
677 _dhcp 1 53 0 5684K 1540K select 1 2:08 8.79% dhclient
1713 root 6 44 0 107M 53556K uwait 0 0:01 0.00% python
1777 root 7 44 0 64244K 8132K ucond 1 0:01 0.00% collectd
2247 root 1 76 0 63032K 23936K ttyin 1 0:00 0.00% python
2270 root 1 44 0 22532K 3884K select 0 0:00 0.00% cnid_dbd
2154 www 1 44 0 21376K 5064K kqread 1 0:00 0.00% lighttpd
1491 root 1 44 0 6772K 1252K select 0 0:00 0.00% powerd
1957 root 1 44 0 33304K 5048K select 0 0:00 0.00% sshd
2087 root 1 44 0 10172K 2736K pause 1 0:00 0.00% csh
1298 root 1 44 0 45488K 8832K select 1 0:00 0.00% smbd
2366 root 1 44 0 9224K 2352K CPU0 0 0:00 0.00% top
1294 root 1 44 0 36880K 6072K select 0 0:00 0.00% nmbd
2298 root 1 44 0 10104K 2684K wait 0 0:00 0.00% bash
1744 root 1 44 0 5812K 1428K nanslp 1 0:00 0.00% inadyn
1063 root 1 44 0 6904K 1484K select 0 0:00 0.00% syslogd
1700 root 1 44 0 23480K 3084K select 1 0:00 0.00% afpd
1901 root 1 50 0 7832K 1508K nanslp 0 0:00 0.00% cron
2251 root 1 76 0 6772K 1276K ttyin 1 0:00 0.00% getty
1879 root 1 46 0 24976K 4484K select 0 0:00 0.00% sshd
2248 root 1 76 0 6772K 1276K ttyin 1 0:00 0.00% getty
1752 messagebus 1 51 0 7980K 2024K select 1 0:00 0.00% dbus-daemon

I'm not sure if this behavior is desired?

 

[Darkaine]

Seems in order to me. Mine looks just like that (almost). Why would this be a problem?

 

[niclas197]

well I believe that part of the UNIX security model was to not run everything as root to not make every process able to wreck the whole system. But if you take a close look at every process I posted it seems to make sense that these particular run as root. Mea culpa ;-)

 

[Darkaine]

I only rarely use any UNIX based systems, Usually only for file recovery and the like. So I've not much knowledge about how it works.

 

[matthewowen01]

you've got to remember that the web GUI is allowed to make setting changes that only root can make, so it either has to be root, or easily get root privileges so security wise, running it as root is not to much of a security risk, all things considered.