[ydl-gen] Installation Question -- addendum

[Derick Centeno]

On Fri, 8 Jan 2010 13:00:52 +0100
"R. Hirschfeld" <ray at unipay.nl> wrote:

> > Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:14:26 -0500
> > From: Derick Centeno <dcenteno at ydl.net>
> > 
> > Just to be explicit, any one Linux computer owned by an individual
> > has one and only one root account.  If however there is a family or
> > group sharing the computer then there can be multiple user accounts
> > each with a user password, but still there is only one root.
> 
> Actually, any account with uid 0 will have root privileges regardless
> of username, and you can have as many of them as you want (although
> many consider it a bad idea to have multiple root accounts).
> 
> In some unix systems (e.g., BSD, I think), there is a standard second
> root account with username "toor" (root spelled backwards).  This can
> be handy if you want to use a root account with a non-standard default
> shell that doesn't reside in the root filesystem but leave another
> with a standard shell for use in single user mode or emergencies.
> 
> Long ago (in simpler times) I once had an account on a shared system
> (a research machine at a university) on which *all* users were given
> uid 0!
> 
> Ray
Hi Ray:

What you describe is possible but in my experience such systems with
multiple root designations are development systems.  In other words,
such systems exist within offices or sites where programmers or others
are using or designing code implementing applications either in-house
for a company or university or cooperating together for a group project
to fulfill a contract.  Even in such scenarios, root access was
strictly controlled.

Other than this scenario, as you noted, it is not a good idea to have
multiple root accounts as such access can wreck destructive havoc in any
Unix/Linux environment.  Even if one is very skilled, utilizing only one
root account it can be an annoying challenge when one makes a mistake
and needs to reinstall or reconstruct/repair an entire Linux
installation from scratch.

All the best...



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