Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:14:32 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Superuser password lost Message-ID: <20080312221432.ff2fd465.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <20080312154658.GA6696@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> References: <47D7CE4E.7030508@alshome.be> <20080312095238.35d257d2.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <20080312151922.GC6354@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> <20080312112736.47c2c4b5.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <20080312154658.GA6696@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>
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Because I don't think it's appropriate to drag this conversation on and on, I'm going to try to answer all the responses in a single email. Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 11:27:36AM -0400, Bill Moran wrote: > [snip] > > > > No. The term "superuser" is a made-up term for any way of gaining > > root privs. In my experience it's confusing as there are two > > commonly used methods for doing this, the su command and sudo, and > > they require different passwords. > > I have never seen the term used that way. > > I have seen su and sudo referred to as ways of a non-root id gaining > superuser priviledge/root priviledge but not a superuser as someone who > is not root, but has a method of gaining root priviledge. Apparently I miscommunicated. My point was that the OP's message used the term "superuser" in an ambiguous way. (i.e. the way I mentioned). To me, it wasn't clear what it was asking for, and thus sending the OP to the PC-BSD community (where folks are probably familiar to the GUI widget he's dealing with) seemed the best thing to do. Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se> wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 11:27:36AM -0400, Bill Moran wrote: [snip] > > > > No. The term "superuser" is a made-up term for any way of gaining > > root privs. > > Wrong. "superuser" is, just as the previous poster said, a synonym > for "root", i.e. a user account with UID=0 > > See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superuser > or http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/superuser.html Who am I to argue with wikipedia? But the second link you provide does not agree with your explanation. According to The Jargon File, my wmoran account is a superuser, because it's a member of the wheel group. Thus, my argument that the term is ambiguous, which (based on the links you provided) you seem to be backing up. Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com> wrote: > Hate to be picky, because I'd agree with most everything else you wrote, > but superuser, and its synonym super-user, do appear in many base man > pages, for example the su page shown below. Sometimes it's a shortcut > for root (or other UID 0 user), like below in su, sometimes just for > effective UID 0 in general, for example as in mount(8). > > > The su utility requests appropriate user credentials via PAM and > > switches > > to that user ID (the default user is the superuser). A shell is then > > executed. Mel <fbsd.questions@rachie.is-a-geek.net> wrote: > > In the kernel even! > suser(9), suser_cred(9), vfs_suser(9) OK, I was wrong on this point. Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com> wrote: > > I'd contend that the su manpage *should* say root not superuser, since > root is hardwired as the default. But for other cases, any user with > UID 0 might work just as well (e.g. toor). I agree on this point, but not enough to bother trying to put a patch together that (based on the conversation here) is likely to be controversial. -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com
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