Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 10:07:03 -0800 (PST) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: root Message-ID: <199803231807.KAA10840@pau-amma.whistle.com>
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>Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 23:38:50 +1100 >From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> >So I wasn't convinced but eventually I did it the right way and didn't log >in as root unless it was necessary. Now I'm pretty used to the idea and even >like it, but I've always wondered, do other people find it so hard to get >used to working with that restriction? Not me.... (I'm "new" to FreeBSD, but have been using UNIX since '86, and various multi-user systems before that -- was an MVS (IBM mainframe) systems programmer for 12 years. Have been playing with computers since '69.) Indeed; I've told at least one person at a previous place of employment that if any non-technical folks had root access to the UNIX systems, they could find someone else to maintain them, 'cause I wouldn't do it: it's a matter of OS integrity -- if clueless folks go around breaking things, I'm not going to walk around behind them trying to clean up their messes for them. Granted, I'm in a different sort of environment than a "home hacker" -- I am a (professional) systems administrator, working in an environment where certain machines need to be reliably up & running all time (to the extent possible). If someone wants to trash his desktop, that's one thing -- I don't care so much. If that machine is actually being used as a server -- so that someone else's work depends on it -- that's a very different issue, and that "server" part of the workload is an excellent candidate to get migrated to a (more) "protected" machine, probably in a locked server room. BTW: the whole notion that whoever is fondling the keyboard at the moment has absolute control over the machine -- even to the point of not really being able to make a distinction between "user" level vs. "system" level processes -- is one of the reasons I heartily mistrust anything from M$. Techniques for better approaches were very well known when they came out with MS-DOS -- UNIX was, after all, running in the early 70s, and was multi-user from the beginning. Cheers, david -- David Wolfskill dhw@whistle.com (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 401-0168 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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