On: Be A Man, Run As The Root Account

[mlLK]

I like your shaving metaphor, but how is a new user coming from a Windows XP ever going to respect what an admin account can really do w/o ever test-driving what root can really do, given that I'm sure most Windows users are running as an Administrator. I guess my point is, given all the times I've screwed myself w/ root, is that root is only dangerous in context of somebody else, while the only cost of seeing what something does in Linux is your time and your file-system. Otherwise, how can one ever appreciate how delicate and fragile a system really is w/o a loving system administrator to cradle her in his key-strokes. ;)

[silentbicycle → mlLK]

Well, they could read the documentation.

Or, they could get hit by script kiddies that keep looking for old vulnerabilities in some daemon they ran as root.

  $ cat /var/log/authlog
  ...
  Sep 13 16:57:31 lucien sshd[16283]: Invalid user webmaster from 218.234.21.151
  Sep 13 16:57:31 lucien sshd[290]: input_userauth_request: invalid user webmaster
  Sep 13 16:57:31 lucien sshd[16283]: Failed password for invalid user webmaster from 218.234.21.151 port 56992 ssh2
  Sep 13 16:57:31 lucien sshd[290]: Received disconnect from 218.234.21.151: 11: Bye Bye
  Sep 13 16:57:34 lucien sshd[12747]: User root from 218.234.21.151 not allowed because not listed in AllowUsers
  Sep 13 16:57:34 lucien sshd[2144]: input_userauth_request: invalid user root
  Sep 13 16:57:34 lucien sshd[12747]: Failed password for invalid user root from 218.234.21.151 port 57162 ssh2
  Sep 13 16:57:34 lucien sshd[2144]: Received disconnect from 218.234.21.151: 11: Bye Bye
  Sep 13 16:57:36 lucien sshd[20586]: Invalid user ftp from 218.234.21.151
  Sep 13 16:57:36 lucien sshd[3604]: input_userauth_request: invalid user ftp
  Sep 13 16:57:36 lucien sshd[20586]: Failed password for invalid user ftp from 218.234.21.151 port 57344 ssh2
  Sep 13 16:57:37 lucien sshd[3604]: Received disconnect from 218.234.21.151: 11: Bye Bye
  Sep 13 16:57:39 lucien sshd[14276]: Invalid user sales from 218.234.21.151
  Sep 13 16:57:39 lucien sshd[25572]: input_userauth_request: invalid user sales
  Sep 13 16:57:39 lucien sshd[14276]: Failed password for invalid user sales from 218.234.21.151 port 57514 ssh2
  Sep 13 16:57:40 lucien sshd[25572]: Received disconnect from 218.234.21.151: 11: Bye Bye
  ... 

(My firewall blocks these losers after two minutes and I still have endless logs like this.)

Learning the first way sucks less.