OCI: Can Existing Users in New OCI Instances be Removed?

Applies to: 

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Version N/A and later

Linux x86-64

 

Goal

New OCI instance has a number of users present in /etc/passwd file, e.g.:

bin
daemon
adm
lp
sync
shutdown
halt
mail
operator
games
ftp
nobody
systemd-network
dbus
polkitd
libstoragemgmt
rpc
abrt
rpcuser
nfsnobody
sshd
postfix
chrony
ntp
tcpdump
oracle-cloud-agent
oracle-cloud-agent-updater
ocarun
opc

 

(actual users may vary across different distributions and different releases)

Can these users be removed from Linux?

 

Solution

Linux users present at the time of the instance creation should not be removed.

Doing so may stop the instance from working properly, prevent access to the instance and cause any number of unexpected problems.