Use of Root

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Tuesday 01 February 2005 08:36, Kevin D. Clark wrote:
> Jerry Feldman writes:
> > Does the business want its programmers to spend
> > time installing and maintaining software?
>
> OTOH, does a business want its programmers twiddling their thumbs
> waiting for the IT staff to maintain and install software?
This is absolutely true. I come from an environment where the engineers 
install and maintain their own systems. At Raytheon, in general, engineers 
were not given root access to their workstations, and HP-UX was installed 
through an ignite server. I do happen to agree with you 100%, but I once 
worked in IT so I can try to espouse the IT point of view. 

> There could be any number of reasons for this situation:  overworked
> IT staff, the IT staff might not know how to install and maintain the
> software, the IT staff might not be familiar with the programmer's
> needs.  Etc.
In most cases, they don't want an accountant or manager to take the time to 
fool with the system. In a development environment, you've got people who 
can maintain their systems effectively. Additionally, corporate wants its 
networks protected, so they don't want someone installing some virus-laden 
software they downloaded from the net. 

The IT people want the systems to be in a known state so they can support 
them, or another point of view is that they don't have to support a lot of 
different stuff. 

> I'm not trying to start a flamewar (and this subject has caused
> flamewars in the past).  This is just the other side of the coin.
I agree here. There is no real answer. I take the approach that in general, 
privileges are not granted, but that certain groups or individuals should 
be given privs. 

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9