Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1998 13:11:01 +0100 From: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: "Michael P. Sale" <mike@merchantsnet.com>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG, dmlb@ragnet.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: mtools use Message-ID: <352B6955.DD52844F@uk.radan.com> References: <01bd6296$aece1600$5006bccc@708644668> <352B28B2.5BDE9363@uk.radan.com> <19980408194800.21697@welearn.com.au>
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Sue Blake wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 08, 1998 at 08:35:14AM +0100, Mark Ovens wrote:
>
> > Note! This will not work if you have a password set for root (which
> > would probably be the case in a commercial environment, but not
> > necessarily on a home machine).
>
> That sounds extremely dangerous to me.
> One day someone you've told might convince you how dangerous it is.
> Meanwhile I hope it doesn't become fashionable among those who are not as
> well able to appreciate the consequences of having no root password.
>
> --
>
> Regards,
> -*Sue*-
>
> find / -name "*.conf" |more
Yes, you are quite correct, we (I) shouldn't be encouraging people,
especially new users, to run without a root password. It's just 8 years
of working on Unix systems many of which do not have a root password has
got me into bad habits, together with never having trashed a system
because of it (putting that in writing will probably guarantee I'll do
an 'rm -rf /*' as root in the next couple of days ;-) ) has made me
complacent.
I see someone else has posted a message suggesting making mount_msdos a
setuid file which will allow non-root users to run it. Whilst this is
still a bit risky it is much better than not having a root password and
is an acceptable compromise for mounting floppies. Just don't get
carried away and make all executable files setuid.
I consider my wrists well & truly slapped :-(
--
Mark Ovens *====================================*
CNC Apps Engineer | One of the main causes of the fall |
Radan Computational Ltd | of the Roman Empire was, that |
mailto:marko@uk.radan.com | lacking a zero, they had no way of |
| indicating the successful |
| termination of their C programs |
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