Hi!

On Mon, 17 May 1999, Jukka Simila wrote:

Yes, and not logging in as root has other advantages as well. E.g. you cannot accidentally do harm to your system by running a trojan horse program. I know it may be weird feeling for somebody who is used to have the whole machine to play with when using DOS/Win9x. (I know well because it used to be _my favorite argument against using Linux at the dorm because i was not sysadmin there and the root guy was both lazy and not catching up w/ latest developments so it seemed to take ages until something was fixed when I asked for it. But now that I am sysadmin as well, I can see the advantage.) Actually for a person knowledgeable about computers it's no big problem if you have root on a machine but for normal users who only know that they have to use *say* Word for wordprocessing or not even this much but only that they have to push that big button in the corner, it's definitely safer to have only user access. And even for experienced users it's better to be safe than sorry. (No kidding, in my university there are many people who when at last learn something about computers they do it like this: Push that big button there. Why? You don't know and don't care. So once that button is not there, you are stuck...)

Actually, the top reasons for help pleas from users feature (in my experience)

- Accidental deletions (including other users files and program files) - Getting lost after doing a lot of clicking in various config dialogs, - Installing / Uninstalling software w/o knowing what you are doing:-) - Suddenly discovering new config options that are hidden and undocumented e.g. "File" menu disappears in Office... (Of course the above only apply to the "other side" OS-es)

Three of the four relate to user activity which should not be allowed unless you know what you are doing.

hmmmmm.... then what's the point? I would be very careful about configuring for sudo because it's inherently dangerous to give users this much control... I'm not being paranoid but I have even disabled Ctrl-Alt-Del because I do not want people to be able to restart my machine when I am not there. After all, it is not Windows that you have to restart after doing any config work (or moving the mouse, sometimes:-)))

but must add that if I had many users here (only have myself this far on this machine) then I would take care to give them the latest user software in things like Netscape and be responsive to what they ask me to do. That's a prerequisite in maintaining tight system security and manageability. You cannot do it yourself, user, but ask me and I will be in a minute.

Regards: Szilveszter

Szeged University Hungary

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majo...@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message