why not root?

[gimli at offcenter.org (Mark Donnelly)]

On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Mike Katz wrote:

> I'm usualy looged on localy as root...and my kde desktop is under root.... I
> keep hearing that this is not good...why?  I find it much easyer to be
> root..then su all teh time to get acces to files and dirs!

Yeah, it's much easier to get access to files & dirs as root.
And to compile and install new kernels.
And to accidentily remove entire filesystem trees (rm -rf /)
And to get IRC bombed into opening up a new system vulnerability.
And to get tricked into installing trojan horses.
And to forget exactly what you did ten minutes ago that killed your
    system.
And...

You see my point.  The reason to avoid it is that it's so easy to make
mistakes when you're always root.  There isn't any warnings under Linux
saying "you're about to remove your entire /home directory structure,
which is a particularly dumb thing to do, are you sure you want to
continue?"  You just do it.

(Kinda like the time I tried to remove /lib/ld.so so that I could upgrade
it.  Sure, we don't need no stinkin' dynamic library linking!)

> Shold I migrate to another user on my box?

Definately.

You should also look into a program named 'sudo' (generally pronounced
soo-doo, although I usually rhyme it with judo), which allows regular
users to execute commands as super user after typing a password, according
to the configuration.  You can give your new user complete sudo
privelages, so that you could type something like 'sudo make bzImage', or 
whatever.

What's the advantage?  You get a syslog entry for every single thing you
do with sudo.  Quite handy, that.

--Mark

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