From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Mar 16 17:56:28 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from ren.sasknow.com (h139-142-245-96.ss.fiberone.net [139.142.245.96]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA8FE37B84E for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 17:56:24 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ryan@sasknow.com) Received: from localhost (ryan@localhost) by ren.sasknow.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA50632; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 19:56:28 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from ryan@sasknow.com) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 19:56:28 -0600 (CST) From: Ryan Thompson To: Harry Woodward-Clarke Cc: Robert Fulford , FreeBSD-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: toor reference in The Complete FreeBSD In-Reply-To: <38D18F13.4A3B7A90@S1.com> Message-ID: Organization: SaskNow Technologies [www.sasknow.com] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Harry Woodward-Clarke wrote to Robert Fulford: > Hiya Robert, > > > I am learning to use FreebSD for the first time, and saw a short > > reference about toor... > > i would like to find the page where i saw it....does anyone know offhand > > what page it > > is on? It was about removing toor, i believe...(3rd edition) > > Hmm... > > I just grep'd the book, and only found a reference to 'toor' in chapter > 32 (Electronic Mail). > > Likewise the Handbook only has comments about setting the password for > toor, nothing about removing it (15.3.1., point 5) > > If I recall correctly, removing 'toor' is not a 'good idea'. ``toor'' is simply another user with uid=gid=0. Most often, it can be used as an alternate way to gain access to the system if the root password is compromised/altered/forgotten. (That is, if you know toor's password :-) Historically, it has been used for other purposes, as well. On most systems, ``toor'' can be safely removed from the password file. Certainly, if you run with securelevel at -1 or 0, you can change the root password by booting into single user mode (`shutdown now`) and using passwd(1) at the shell prompt. I have run my systems sans toor for many years, simply for the reason that one user with superuser privileges is enough for me :-) -- Ryan Thompson Systems Administrator, Accounts Phone: +1 (306) 664-1161 SaskNow Technologies http://www.sasknow.com #106-380 3120 8th St E Saskatoon, SK S7H 0W2 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message