Running as root 6763
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On Thu, 08 Dec 2005 17:14:37 +0000, Mark Kent Just a clumsy way of implementing a root account. I'm no master of sudo, but wasn't there some degree of configuration required...
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What a narrow world of alternatives you live in. Some distros, as well as OSX, use a sudo approach, so there is no root user per se, which is most certainly another alternative.
That said, having several accounts with different capabilities could be extremely useful, indeed, this is how Unix is structured in any case, ie., precisely what the groups are for.
BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, 09 Dec 2005 10:35:42 +0100, Sudo can be configured by the root user yes, but distros like Ubuntu have sudo preconfigured for the first user (and can...
begin oeprotect.scr Just like a root account can, you mean. This is a huge change of...
Ah - so you rely on the admin being perfect. This is essentially the exact opposite of the Microsoft view, the mirror image, if you like, where they rely on the user being perfect. What both you, and Microsoft, perhaps should consider, is that admins and users are people, and are not perfect.
A mistake made by an admin on a single user system affects one person. A mistake made by an admin on a 20,000 user system could affect 20,000 people... A mistake made by an admin on a banking system could bring the company down. Relying on self-discipline of one person is rather risky, wouldn't you say?
Most users of multi-user systems have no say in the choice of admin, so it's nothing to do with them at all. As I said above, people make mistakes, so systems which help to avoid those mistakes are well worth considering.
-- end Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor. -- Edgar R. Fiedler