Re: root login
On Mon, 28 Apr 2003, Michael Toomim wrote:
> Jeff Waugh wrote:
> >It is far easier to 'fuck things up' in a GUI than it is on the command
> >line. Deleting /dev or /usr in a file manager, for instance, or even just
> >moving them.
>
> [snip]
>
> I think it's *harder* to fuck things up in a gui than on the command
> line. It's easy to mis-type "rm ./*" as "rm /*", for instance, but it's
> hard to use a gui to select an entire file system and delete it. Plus,
> a gui can provide extra levels of accident-protection, like "are you
> sure?" dialog boxes for sensitive information.
I agree with this sentiment, especially from a non-power-user point of view
(i.e. exactly what I click on is exactly what the computer does). But as
much we as programmers may discourage it, there's still a chance that the
software we use contains errors that could make it do dangerous things.
Especially if that software's been cracked somehow (or if you're using
debian experimental ;-).
It seems like one argument with GUI software is that it's generally more
complex and thus harder to iron out such programmer errors, or to detect
cracked libraries. So with software that doesn't have a GUI (ifconfig comes
to mind, though it might not be a great example), and particularly software
that lots of systems use (e.g. pam) there's probably less of a risk.
If this argument is true, have you looked at the crazy processes that run
to support a GNOME session ? It's wack. I really like using my panel
applets, and I think nautilus is fun, but I'm not sure that means it's a
smart idea to trust bonobo-activation (for example) with root permissions.
Seems like the gist of this argument is the motivation to minimize the
number of running processes that aren't directly controlled/written by the
user. And yes, this pretty much assumes that the user won't write silly
things at a command line, like "rm /*" (after all, that's a program, too,
written in shell script).
leif
--
Leif Morgan Johnson . http://ambient.2y.net/leif/
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