On Sun, Apr 27, 2003 at 08:26:08PM -0400, alex wrote: > I don't understand the warnings about logging in as root > if all you intend to do is make some changes that only root > can make. What difference does it make if you do su > or log on as root? Doesn't a root mistake have the same effect > either way? > > Doesn't root=root regardless of how you become root? > Ditto for user? > > Can someone justify the warning? okay, i think this will explain it for you: - when you su to root in a terminal, you have one process running as root (bash, or tcsh, or whatever your shell is), plus the commands you type in. - when you log in as root on a desktop, you have your window manager, desktop environment, and every other child process running as root. this isn't as bad if you're a fan of small, simple window managers like twm, but if you have a gnome or kde desktop setup, that's a couple dozen processes at least, all running as root, able to do all kinds of harm to your system when you're the first to discover the next bug in a debian software package. hth sean
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