Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:30:18 -0400 From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> To: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Superuser password lost Message-ID: <20080313143018.GA11507@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <20080312221432.ff2fd465.wmoran@potentialtech.com> 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> <20080312221432.ff2fd465.wmoran@potentialtech.com>
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On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 10:14:32PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote: > > 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. I don't really care, but when I read the OP, I believed he was looking for root from what was presented and so that was how I responded. The rest is just small talk. But, asking the PC-BSD folk is not a bad idea. ////jerry > ... > ... > > 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 > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
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