From owner-freebsd-chat  Mon Oct 16 15:48:17 2000
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Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 23:48:45 +0100
To: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
From: David Goddard <goddard@acm.org>
Subject: Re: Traditional UN*X conventions (Or: Why not to login as
  root?)
Cc: David Scheidt <dscheidt@enteract.com>,
	Kris Kirby <kris@catonic.net>
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 .com>
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At 15:30 16/10/00 -0500, David Scheidt wrote:
...
>% cd
>% rm -rf * .bak

Actually, at the risk of being overly pedantic, on the FreeBSD systems that
I've seen, the above would only wipe out either /root or the home directory
of the user that su'd (depending on how things were set up), I think (but
I'm not about to go around trying it).

>done as dms will annoy me and send me scurrying for the backup tapes or
>disks.  Done as root, I'll be much more than annoyed.  I'll have users after
>me!  And a wasted evening while I rebuild the system.  I don't do anything
>as root, with the exception of user administration, and installing or
>removing software.  

Yeah, but I'm sure that Murphy's Law or one of its evil cousins means that
when you *do* make that typo, it'll be when you're logged on as root in
order to do something essential.  Personally, I like to have something like
this in my .cshrc file:

  if (${me} == 'root') then
        alias rm rm -i
        alias mv mv -i
        alias cp cp -i
  endif

It's not infallible (it won't protect you from wanton use of -f for
example), but it helps...

My own nightmare happened a while back was when I was logged onto a Solaris
box.  I wanted to change some file group ownerships, so happily typed
something like:

 $ cd /path/directory
 $ su
 Password:
 $ chgrp -R lusergroup *

Of course, on *this* box, as soon as I su'd, it changed my directory to /,
with obvious hilarious consequences (not).  There's nothing like spending
ages fixing your damage to educate you that it's generally a much better
idea to do
 $ somepotentiallybadcommand -R directory
rather than
 $ somepotentiallybadcommand -R *

:-(

Dave


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