Re: tlug: Question

[Christopher Sekiya <wileyc@example.com>]

On Thu, 28 May 1998, Alan B. Stone wrote:

> why RedHat (and others)  have a "root" directory, while systems like
> Solaris do not? 

Protection against doing dumb stuff.

Old UNIX systems (4.2BSD, I'm talking about _you_ ;) ) had root's home
directory as /.

(old UNIX hands, skip this part)

'rm -r -f *' is a useful tool, but dangerous in the wrong hands.  The
right hands may be made wrong hands very easily ... lack of sleep, lack of
caffeine, a little too much alcohol ...

... it's a _lot_ easier to recover from a "cd ; rm -r -f *" as root when
the root home directory is /root than it is when root's home directory is
/.

And, yes, I've done it myself.  SunOS.

If anyone wants a _really_ graphic example of such a situation (with a
really clever method of recovery), I've a text file that I'd be happy to
pass along.

--	Chris (wileyc@example.com)

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