Who is debian-tor in my /etc/passwd file?

Question

I have found this entry in /etc/passwd:

debian-tor:x:117:123::/var/lib/tor:/bin/false

But there is no /var/lib/tor folder. This is on a server not a desktop.

Answer 1

This is a user that is created by installing tor or tor-browser.

For instance, if you look into postinst script of tor package, you'll see:

# checking debian-tor account

uid=`getent passwd debian-tor | cut -d ":" -f 3`
home=`getent passwd debian-tor | cut -d ":" -f 6`

# if there is the uid the account is there and we can do
# the sanit(ar)y checks otherwise we can safely create it.

if [ "$uid" ]; then
    if [ "$home" = "/var/lib/tor" ]; then
        :
        #echo "debian-tor homedir check: ok"
    else
        echo "ERROR: debian-tor account has an unexpected home directory!"
        echo "It should be '/var/lib/tor', but it is '$home'."
        echo "Removing the debian-tor user might fix this, but the question"
        echo "remains how you got into this mess to begin with."
        exit 1
    fi
else
    adduser --quiet \
        --system \
        --disabled-password \
        --home /var/lib/tor \
        --no-create-home \
        --shell /bin/false \
        --group \
        debian-tor
fi


for i in lib log; do
    if ! [ -d "/var/$i/tor" ]; then
        echo "Something or somebody made /var/$i/tor disappear."
        echo "Creating one for you again."
        mkdir "/var/$i/tor"
    fi
done

which restorecon >/dev/null 2>&1 && restorecon /var/lib/tor
chown debian-tor:debian-tor /var/lib/tor
chmod 02700 /var/lib/tor

which restorecon >/dev/null 2>&1 && restorecon /var/log/tor
chown debian-tor:adm /var/log/tor
chmod 02750 /var/log/tor

But this user is not removed when you uninstall tor. I don't see anything that removes the user in prerm, or postrm script.

So it means that you have tor installed, or installed it previously.

There is no harm in having some extra user in your system, but you can remove it if you like.

You can remove the user by running

sudo deluser debian-tor