From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 12 16:07:57 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A0AC2106568A for ; Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:07:57 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from mk-outboundfilter-1.mail.uk.tiscali.com (mk-outboundfilter-1.mail.uk.tiscali.com [212.74.114.37]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 333CF8FC23 for ; Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:07:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) X-Trace: 60985416/mk-outboundfilter-1.mail.uk.tiscali.com/PIPEX/$INTERNET-ACCEPTED/None/62.31.10.181 X-SBRS: None X-RemoteIP: 62.31.10.181 X-IP-MAIL-FROM: xfb52@dial.pipex.com X-IP-BHB: Once X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AnQBAPqc10c+Hwq1/2dsb2JhbAAIqC8 X-IP-Direction: OUT Received: from 62-31-10-181.cable.ubr05.edin.blueyonder.co.uk (HELO [192.168.23.2]) ([62.31.10.181]) by smtp.pipex.tiscali.co.uk with ESMTP; 12 Mar 2008 16:07:28 +0000 Message-ID: <47D7FFB8.40506@dial.pipex.com> Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:07:20 +0000 From: Alex Zbyslaw User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-GB; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20061205 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bill Moran References: <47D7CE4E.7030508@alshome.be> <20080312095238.35d257d2.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <20080312151922.GC6354@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> <20080312112736.47c2c4b5.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <20080312112736.47c2c4b5.wmoran@potentialtech.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions Subject: Re: Superuser password lost X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:07:57 -0000 Bill Moran wrote: >I don't know of anywhere in the FreeBSD base system >that the term "superuser" is used, so I assume he'll get a more >direct answer from the PC-BSD folks. > > Hate to be picky, because I'd agree with most everything else you wrote, but superuser, and its synonym super-user, do appear in many base man pages, for example the su page shown below. Sometimes it's a shortcut for root (or other UID 0 user), like below in su, sometimes just for effective UID 0 in general, for example as in mount(8). > The su utility requests appropriate user credentials via PAM and > switches > to that user ID (the default user is the superuser). A shell is then > executed. I'd contend that the su manpage *should* say root not superuser, since root is hardwired as the default. But for other cases, any user with UID 0 might work just as well (e.g. toor). --Alex