Always logged in as root, why not?

bos_mindwarp · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2003 1:01 pm Post subject:

once I did:

maca · Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003 10:38 am Post subject:

if you dont like typing su ...make a symbolic link to it with s. Im not going to belabour the points that all the others have made .... but put simply if your in a production environment things should be more stable .... root is used for configs and such like, not for day to day scripting and or coding .... my advise is learn to use chmod chown chgrp and put users where they belong "behind a big farking wall that stops them doing anything" rember 99% of problems are between the keyboard and the chair.
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tomk · Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003 1:23 pm Post subject:

RedBeard0531 · Guru Joined: 21 Sep 2002 Posts: 415 Location: maryland

I run as root and the onlything i've hosed in the past few years has been my home dir whih runnen as a user wouldnt protect me from. :lol:

I type rm ~/ .gaim or whatever and poof! there goes myhome dir. the ironic thing is that since gaim is a directory it isnt deleted. A few years ago i hosed a mdk system while installing aim for linux. I untared it to my /root instead of to my / dir( I was new and both are called the root directory). When i went to delete ~/usr, I forgot the ~. After that I swore i'd never run as root again. Shortly after i started usen gento, I went back to runnen as root. It is a lot easier.

I have a question though- Why the -f switch on rm? seems like a wasted letter as rm -r works for me.
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baigsabeeh · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 9:54 pm Post subject: How Dangerous Is This

I hate to have a normal user and I never had one in Fedora Core 3 when I used that for nearly a year as the root user. How dangerous is it to work and do stuff regularly as the root user?

codergeek42 · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 10:04 pm Post subject:

Moved from Desktop Environments to Networking & Security as it does not seem to be a question of installing/configuring/using a graphical environment, but of security concerns.

You should only be running things as root on *nix when absolutely needed (such as editing a base system configuration file or the like). In fact, the strict user/root separation of priveleges and enforcement of that is one of the fundamental architecture designs of *nix that help make it more secure by default than some other operating systems.

Hope that helps.
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jballou · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 10:08 pm Post subject:

It's insecure, like how Windows has every user need to be an administrator to do anything but use Notepad. It also keeps the dummy-proofing element out, as a user I can't be in the wrong dir, say, one with essential system files, and rm * -r. As root, if I'm switching between term tabs and I accidentally delete /etc instead of ~/.fvwm I am in a world of hurt.
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Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20585

codergeek42 · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 11:36 pm Post subject:

Nifty.

Thanks, pjp.
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baigsabeeh · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 12:14 am Post subject:

Then could I just use root until I have all my programs setup to the point that I wouldn't need to install more and then just make an everyday user that would be allowed to use those programs. How would I configure a new user anyway?

maca · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 2:23 am Post subject: root user

man useradd
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You can take nothing from me that I will more freely give, except my life

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abaelinor · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2005 Posts: 51

c4 · Guru Joined: 21 Feb 2004 Posts: 312 Location: Sweden

bacentergt · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Posts: 82

When I try to run xsane, I get the following warning:

RuiP · l33t Joined: 15 Jan 2005 Posts: 643

among other things:
rm -rf /
can do funny things (delete ALL your OS is fun and pedagogic)
allow you, when you are tired, to do rm -rf / (i just do it an hour ago... luckly i backup yesterday:))
install whatever at once
allow anyone who are access to your computer delete or install whatever at once
etc.

to add a user (do it as soon as possible)

just type:
adduser

codergeek42 · Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 12:34 am Post subject:

Merged bacentergt's thread, "Why is root so dangerous?????" with this thread.
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sundialsvc4 · Guru Joined: 10 Nov 2005 Posts: 436

It's always weirded-me-out that tens of thousands of Windows installations are out there .. with security turned off, and no one's telling anyone (almost) that the feature even exists. Much less how to use it. Completely dumb: people lock their cars, doors, and windows at night, but not their computers?! And what's worse: nobody's telling them that they should do it?

Anyhow... remember: any program that you execute, executes as you. That means that it can do, what you can do, whether you intended for it to do so or not. Ahh, there's the rub. And that's why viruses exist. The virus, executing with administrative powers, tells the computer to do something totally evil and stupid, and the computer obeys.

Even if you are "the god of your machine," you don't pull out your magic-wand at every moment. Most of the time you're just an ordinary person. Exercising "godly powers" ought to require an explicit act on your part, and this very simple mechanism does just that.

MidighToker · n00b Joined: 03 Nov 2005 Posts: 21

does it make me a bad man to have "sudo /bin/bash" in my .bashrc file on the mac?
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