What is the purpose of the `daemon` group and user on RHEL/CentOS Linux?

What is the purpose of the daemon group and user?

The daemon User ID/Group ID was used as an unprivileged User ID/Group ID for daemons to execute under in order to limit their access to the system. Generally daemons should now run under individual User ID/Group IDs in order to further partition daemons from one another.

Source User & Group Names

See also Why is it recommended to create a group and user for some applications? for more information.


It is there mostly as a legacy thing. The daemon User ID/Group ID was used as an unprivileged User ID/Group ID for daemons to execute under in order to limit their access to the system. Generally daemons should now run under individual User ID/Group IDs in order to further partition daemons from one another.

What it would hurt to use the daemon group though? Probably nothing but it isn't like creating a group has much overhead and you avoid the possibility that something happens to the daemon group somewhere else that impacts your service.