Q as to Root v other login

[Erik Hemdal]

>
>On Sun, Nov 28, 2004 at 07:12:31PM -0400, Terry R. Grier wrote:
>  
>
>>I have FC3 on my laptop. I will be the only one using it in a personal/home
>>setting.
>>
>>I made a log in for myself.
>>SHould I just log in as ROOT is it better procedure to login as my user name?
>>    
>>
>
>Other people are saying to not log in as root, but nobody is saying why,
>so I'll try and address that.
>
>The main reason that Windows is so vulnerable to viruses is that the
>average user can write to the system file areas. 
>
Among other reasons :-)

>. . .
>You can also set yourself up with sudo, but if you do that, you should
>refrain from using the nopasswd option (since it would be trivial for a
>virus writer to add a sudo command in front of the damaging code).
>
>        .../Ed
>
>
>  
>
Ed's points are very valid. But even if you are not concerned with 
external attacks (maybe you're not connecting to the Internet at all), 
you still should avoid casual root access. The root user has the ability 
to override user permissions (root can read/write/change files anywhere) 
so as root it is extremely easy to make an unrecoverable change that 
damages the system.

In some cases, commands provide more functionality to root than to 
ordinary users. So you can wreak havoc on users other than yourself (or 
on 'system users' that do things to keep the system healthy) if you are 
not careful. Some changes can be extremely difficult to undo.

Erik