Re: root login
<quote who="Michael Toomim">
> But god forbid -- they WON'T run little old bonobo-activation as root for
> fear that it will destroy some "sensitive" information. This is totally
> irrational.
Excuse me for a moment, but are you utterly boneheaded?
> Seriously, most files owned by root are LESS sensitive than files owned by
> users.
I guess that's a yes. Deleting stuff in /home is one thing. Deleting or
writing to stuff in /dev (or many other places root can get to that users
cannot) is a whole other can of worms. Simple network-aware software (such
as IM clients) with buffer overflows can only do so much as a user; as root
they can be disasterous. root is god. root can destroy hardware. root can
destroy other operating systems on the same machine.
If you are seriously saying that the entire stack of user-oriented software,
not designed for secure/safe (these are two separate issues) execution as
root, is "just as dangerous running as a user as root", then you need to lay
off the crack.
> Well, the same with running a gui as root. A disaster is not likely to
> happen. If you really wanted to get users not to fuck things up, you'd
> need to disallow them access to their home directories. But that would be
> irrational, wouldn't it?
You are an idiot.
- Jeff
--
linux.conf.au 2004: Adelaide, Australia http://lca2004.linux.org.au/
"They are, as I told Telsa, all very small cheques. Indeed our cheques
only come in one size, otherwise cheque books would be far too hard to
manufacture." - Alan Cox
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