Re: tlug: Question

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Scott" == Scott Stone <sstone@example.com> writes:

    Scott> On Fri, 29 May 1998, NIIBE Yutaka wrote:
    >> In tradition, the home directory of root is /.  And (as far as
    >> I'm concerned), the tips on traditional UNIX is (was)
    >> 
    >> Never use root account except (special) system administration.
    >> 
    >> In other words, "use your own account as possible."  Hence,
    >> it's rare to see cluttered / directory which has "Mail", "News"
    >> or "core".  So, there has been no problem.
    >>
    >> (Here is my guess) However, many novice users switched from DOS
    >> don't make their own account, but use default "root" account

Debian rules!  Debian insults your intelligence if you don't make a
normal user account.

    >> (forever).  This sometimes makes cluttered / directory and it
    >> can be cause of system trouble.  For example, $HOME/bin is
    >> usually private directory, but in case of HOME=/ it can be
    >> public directory.

Nope.  Security.  You can't make "/" 0700.  Yes, I know, it's
incredibly paranoid to think that a "ls" of root's home directory
could be meaningful, but there you are.

There is definitely stuff in /root/.bash_history and /root/.rhosts
that I don't want J. Random Hacker seeing.

    Scott> Also, Linux has some inherent quirks that make root usage
    Scott> mandatory.  For example, anything that uses svgalib must be
    Scott> run as root or made setuid, and even making it setuid
    Scott> doesn't work for some of the programs...

This isn't Linux, this is any Unix system where the console is used
for non-administration work.

    Scott> my wife root access on our computer at home so she can play
    Scott> Lemmings under the Amiga emulator.

:-)  Not just because she wanted root access?

Why don't you fix svgalib?



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