Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 20:17:49 +1000 From: Stephen McKay <syssgm@dtir.qld.gov.au> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: why 'toor'? Message-ID: <199705091017.UAA28441@ogre.dtir.qld.gov.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SV4.3.95.970508200805.13403G-100000@parkplace.cet.co.jp> from Michael Hancock at "Thu, 08 May 1997 11:11:42 %2B0000" References: <Pine.SV4.3.95.970508200805.13403G-100000@parkplace.cet.co.jp>
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On Thursday, 8th May 1997, Michael Hancock wrote: >On 8 May 1997, Choi Jun Ho wrote: > >> >From all the dist of FreeBSD I've seen, there is an id 'toor', >> equivalent to 'root'. I heard that is for Bourne-shell root users, but >> I cannot understand why two root id exist. Is it a some traditional >> reason or some kind of joke? > >'root' is to be used with 'sh' a statically linked binary in case /usr >isn't mounted. > >'toor' can use a dynamically linked 'bash' and be equivalent to root. Sounds like a good plan, but it's not what we do. As distributed, "root" on FreeBSD runs /bin/csh, and "toor" runs /bin/sh (both are only available statically linked). Since I hate csh with a burning passion, I always delete "toor" and convert "root" to sh when installing FreeBSD. By the way, "Charlie Root" and "Bourne-again Superuser" are a bit silly as names. I always include the machine name, like "doorstop root". I suppose the real reason for "toor" is to appease the csh haters. It's been like that since 386BSD as far as I can recall. I don't think it was like this in the 4.2 BSD days, but I now have no way to check. Stephen.
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