From owner-freebsd-newbies Wed Apr 8 05:11:31 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id FAA23067 for freebsd-newbies-outgoing; Wed, 8 Apr 1998 05:11:31 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from post.mail.demon.net (post-31.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.41]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id FAA23044 for ; Wed, 8 Apr 1998 05:11:20 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from marko@uk.radan.com) Received: from (uk.radan.com) [158.152.75.22] by post.mail.demon.net with smtp (Exim 1.82 #2) id 0yMthG-0005ZF-00; Wed, 8 Apr 1998 13:11:18 +0100 Organisation: Radan Computational Ltd., Bath, UK. Phone: +44-1225-320320 Fax: +44-1225-320311 Received: from beavis.uk.radan.com (beavis [193.114.228.122]) by uk.radan.com (8.6.10/8.6.10) with SMTP id NAA04275; Wed, 8 Apr 1998 13:11:10 +0100 Received: from uk.radan.com (gppsun4) by beavis.uk.radan.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA12310; Wed, 8 Apr 98 13:11:08 BST Message-Id: <352B6955.DD52844F@uk.radan.com> Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1998 13:11:01 +0100 From: Mark Ovens Organization: Radan Computational Ltd X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.03 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 4.1.3_U1 sun4m) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Sue Blake Cc: "Michael P. Sale" , freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG, dmlb@ragnet.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: mtools use References: <01bd6296$aece1600$5006bccc@708644668> <352B28B2.5BDE9363@uk.radan.com> <19980408194800.21697@welearn.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org 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 | *====================================* To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message