[ale] Root vs Normal User

[Christopher Fowler]

Running root does not kill the box.  The person running as root will.

I used to run as root.  Then I fubared an AIX RS/6000 because I ran tar
in the root directory.  Being a normal user would have saved me.  We
were down for 6 hours because of my mistake.  A UNIX box does not assume
the user is an idiot like Windows.  There are no confirmation dialogs
for rm, tar, and others.  A UNIX box will do exactly what you tell it to
do.  This is why you do not need to be root unless you are doing
administration to the box.  Linespire allowing root would scare me.  If
I was the support manager there I would be scared that my calls would
actually increase.  The whole idea of not running as root is not for
protection from hackers on the outside but for the protection from the
users on the inside.

Why is sudo not good enough?  If you need to run some program as root
then use sudo.  That is what it was designed for.