On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 00:15:24 +0200 Sebastian Kapfer <sebastian_kapfer@web.de> wrote: > On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:30:25 +0200, David B Harris wrote: > > > On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:01:54 +0200 > > Sebastian Kapfer <sebastian_kapfer@web.de> wrote: > >> I don't have experience with real web servers (only a very small private > >> one). > > > > That would be the problem, I think. > > That doesn't answer the question though. What do non-admins do on a web > server which requires shell access? I'm puzzled. Eh? I never said "non-admins". You're entirely missing the point, and missing words in my emails. I said, briefly, that much *of the time* spent doing routine administration work can be done as a nonprivileged user. Now, you may be able to type at 200 words per minute, but I'm betting you can't read a manpage in less than a second. Only very few commands need to actually be run as root, and that's what sudo is for. Even if I was logged in *as root* because there was no nonprivileged account available, I would still use sudo for the audit trail which has proven invaluable in the past. If you would like some specific examples of what things can be done without administrative privileges, here are a few commands: ls (1) - list directory contents cat (1) - concatenate files and print on the standard output apt-cache (8) - APT package handling utility - cache manipulator vi (1) - text editors Get the picture? There are times when you actually need to run ls, cat, and the rest as root, but they're relatively rare. Add your nonprivileged account to the "adm" group, and you'll be able to read (but not write to) pretty much every file that you'll need to consult for diagnostic purposes.
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