Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 19:57:06 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: toor? Message-ID: <20020207185706.GA5479@raggedclown.net> In-Reply-To: <3C62C8B0.2010102@rambo.simx.org> References: <001e01c1af94$a14e04f0$2300a8c0@zeus> <20020207091505.A1036@encephalon.de> <20020207172522.GA2088@raggedclown.net> <3C62B9EE.3020009@rambo.simx.org> <20020207182321.GA27040@davinci.writeclick.co.za> <3C62C8B0.2010102@rambo.simx.org>
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On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 07:34:24PM +0100, Roger 'Rocky' Vetterberg wrote: > Marcus Collins wrote: > > >On Thu, 7 Feb 2002 at 18:31:26 +0100, Roger 'Rocky' Vetterberg wrote: > > > >>Could someone explain why you cant just chsh or vipw roots shell to > >>bash, sh or whatever? > >>I cant see any good reason to have two root accounts just because you > >>dont like the default root shell. > >> > > > >The default root account uses csh as its shell. This is located in /bin, > >which is (usually) in the / filesystem. > > > >You can set toor to use whatever shell you want, for example, > >/usr/local/bin/bash, and use that in day-to-day superuser operations. > > > >If your /usr filesystem gets hosed, you can still login as root > >(= /bin/csh), assuming your / filesystem can still be mounted. This, > >AFAIK, is the theory behind having two UID 0 users, rather than just > >one with whichever shell you select. > > > >The "root" user is just a traditional name for UID 0. Any user with UID > >0 has superuser privileges. > > > >Cheers! > > > >-- Marcus > > > If root has a shell residing under /usr, and /usr for some reason is not > mounted at boot, it will prompt you somehing like "Enter full pathname > of shell or press enter for /bin/sh". > So this can not be the only reason there are two root accounts. > At the risk of being boring, I will repeat. There is one superuser id, 0, the 0 is what makes it the superuser. Since the dawn of Unix it has had the name "root", it could have been anything. It happens to be available on FreeBSD under 2 different names, and possibly the major reason is convenience, tied up perhaps with FreeBSD's ancestry which harks back to the early days of BSD, when the cshell was written. I really think this little thread-ette has run it's course :) If you do not like it delete it, change root's shell, boil an egg :) -- Regards Cliff To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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