Use of Root

[David Kramer]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> Going back to my war story, the IT people's argument was that it would be 
> easier for me to undermine their network, and that I could change the root 
> password, thus preventing IT from being able to do something on the 
> machine. Both of these are valid points. With root privileges, I can easily 
> run a network sniffer and attack the network from within. The second 
> argument is valid when the IT people want to push an upgrade from a central 
> location (such as a kickstart). 
> 
> So, it comes down to support, security, and data integrity. 

... All of which could have been handled by sudo.  With sudo, you can give 
mortals the power to run certain commands as root without the root 
password. Best of both worlds.  I know JABR is big on sudo.

Since I am both Sysadmin and Power User at home, what I do is I have a 
separate login window on a separate vitrual window for root, and it has a 
red tinted background.  I consider this acceptable risk because I do 
regular backups, though.


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DDDD   David Kramer         david at thekramers.net       http://thekramers.net
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DKK D  Martial arts, politics, war... they are all just ways 
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