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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!uunet!olivea!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!ogicse!das-news.harvard.edu!husc-news.harvard.edu!husc.harvard.edu!haley From: haley@scws3.harvard.edu (Elizabeth Haley) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: root access... Message-ID: <haley.732709619@husc.harvard.edu> Date: 21 Mar 93 10:26:59 GMT References: <1993Mar21.060147.18226@ultb.isc.rit.edu> Lines: 40 Nntp-Posting-Host: scws3.harvard.edu dsf5454@ritvax.isc.rit.edu writes: >'root', and know from my mistakes what can go wrong. ;-) But it would help to >add validity to hear from you out in netland like what kind of reasons why this >is wrong. (well, at least, _highly_ unrecommended). Hmmm... Well, let me say this: It can be bad, if you are incautious with your use of various commands. However, logging in as root is in effect tham same as using an MS-DOS machine with a few powerful utilities that can do nasty things. The reality is this: as root, you can erase or change anything regardless of the permissions. This means you could, for instance, remove you passwd file by mistake or some other file necessary to functioning. Or you execute a "rm -r *" at "/". But here's the thing: How else does one learn? Having been a computer jock on microsystems for about 15 years now, I can tell you that doing stupid things almost takes an effort now. It's not that I have all kind of protection in place on the machine. It's that I can't execute a rm -r * without checking the "pwd" about 5 times, because checking your working directory a bunch os times is much faster than restoring a backup or running "Unerase" over a whole disk, both of which I have had to do. So casually logging in as root can be dangerous, but a little caution will mitigate the "danger". In other words, ****MAKE BACKUPS!!!!!**** That said, off to screw another days work... -- Jesus saves sinners... /****************************************************************************\ ==============David Charles Todd, tHE mAN wITH tHREE fIRST nAMES============== I/O Error: core dumped. \*************************hacksaw@headcheese.daa.uc.edu**********************/