Hi! On Sat, Jun 09, 2007 at 10:06:26PM +0530, Mahesh M wrote: > Hi, > > Once I tried using the deluser commmand and while trying to see how well it > works, I tried the following command: > deluser root > And to my surprise, root was deleted. Is that good? Self-termination, > suiside!!! It's not *that* good.... But there's no law against shooting yourself in the foot. (except perhaps Darwin's law?) > I dont know if this is a bug, or if it has been kept for some kind of > flexibility. Under some rare circumstances, a root user is not necessary, so the line can be safely deleted from /etc/passwd. E.g. for a dedicated router, you can get away with stopping all processes whilst leaving the kernel running and forwarding packets. Also some people prefer to rename root to something else... But it is somewhat rare... > I feel that deluser should not delete the root, even though it may be able to > delete other priviledged users. I doubt it would be considered a bug - but a warning in the style of "Do you really know what you're doing?" might be useful. I wouldn't like to see them system shouting warnings whenever the system administrator is about to do something dangerous - system administrators are meant to know what they're doing. And if they don't, then you're screwed anyway.... :-) -- Karl E. Jorgensen karl@jorgensen.org.uk http://www.jorgensen.org.uk/ karl@jorgensen.com http://karl.jorgensen.com ==== Today's fortune: I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me. -- Camillo Di Cavour
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