On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:59:23 -0500, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > For security reasons, it's better to run commands as > normal users rather than root.
I tend to be pretty cavalier about that stuff. Some people go to seed on trying to issue absolutely every possible command that doesn't require root access as a non-root user. But to me, that's too much work to keep everything straight. To me, redefining hardware interfaces is a system administration task. If I'm doing system administration work, I become root. And when I'm finished with system administration work I go back to being an ordinary user again. The two things that are likely to change my habits are these: (1) If I'm on a Linux system, but I do not have system administration rights, I would, over time, find as many ways as possible to issue commands that don't ordinarily work for a non-root user, in order to satisfy my curiosity with what's going on in the system, or in order to get my work done. (2) If I repeatedly get burned by viruses, worms, etc., I would become paranoid enough to not do anything as root that I didn't have to do as root. But since neither is the case right now, I just follow the simple formula above. Is this a system administration task? If the answer is yes, I become root. If the answer is no, I don't. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org