What is the difference between running under system account and user account?

teamcity teamcity-7.0
Samselvaprabu picture Samselvaprabu · Nov 6, 2012 · Viewed 7.2k times · Source

I am new to TeamCity and currently installing it.

It was asking whether I want to be running the server under a "user account" or "the SYSTEM account" / running the agent under a "user account" or "the SYSTEM account".

I assumed that since my version control (clearcase) is configured to my employee id, I should select user account.

Is my assumption correct? When should either the SYSTEM account or a user account be used? What is the difference between them?

Answer

David Peden picture David Peden · Nov 9, 2012

What you're talking about is allowing TeamCity to run as LocalSystem vs a specified user account (local or in ActiveDirectory). LocalSystem is highly priveleged (see this article).

If you are interested in following the principle of least privelege, you should create a user account. If you're running TeamCity on your local workstation, LocalSystem is probably ok.

The same advice applies to the build agent.

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