Description of problem: ======================== * The home directory of tss account is /dev/null This causes issue with CIS 8 benchmarking Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): ======================== * RHEL 8.x , All versions * This also exist in RHEL 7 and RHEL 9 How reproducible: 100% Steps to Reproduce: ======================== 1. Check the home directory for tss user Actual results: ======================== * _tss_ user has `/dev/null` as home directory ~~~ $ grep tss /etc/passwd tss:x:59:59:Account used by the trousers package to sandbox the tcsd daemon:/dev/null:/sbin/nologin ~~~ Expected results: ======================== * It could have been `/` anyway the `/sbin/nologin` is set but not `/dev/null` Additional info: ======================== * The rationale specified for the compliance in CIS 8 benchmarking: ~~~ If the user's home directory does not exist or is unassigned, the user will be placed in "/" and will not be able to write any files or have local environment variables set ~~~ * Benchmarking follows this scrip to find the 'tss' user and flags it as not as per compliance ~~~ grep -E -v '^(halt|sync|shutdown)' /etc/passwd | awk -F: '($7 != "'"$(which nologin)"'" && $7 != "/bin/false") { print $1 " " $6 }' | while read -r user dir; do if [ ! -d "$dir" ]; then echo "The home directory ($dir) of user $user does not exist." fi done ~~~ * The explanation I found is : ~~~ tss account is used by the trousers package to sandbox the tcsd daemon. trousers RPM is the part of OS installation. tss account doesn't need a home directory, so the default value is /dev/null, which will not cause any issue. In addition, because tss account doesn't need to login to the system, it has /sbin/nologin assigned. ~~~