On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 09:44:41AM +1000, david wrote: > On Mon, 2006-06-05 at 09:25 +1000, James Gray wrote: > > On Mon, 5 Jun 2006 09:01 am, Matthew Palmer wrote: > > > On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 06:57:59AM +1000, James Gray wrote: > > > > On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 01:04 pm, david wrote: > > > > > On my pure server boxes, I've activated the root account because it's > > > > > the only account that I use. Why use sudo when every time I log in and > > > > > everything I do on the box is done as root, and only I do it. I ssh > > > > > into my own account, then su - > > > > > > > > "sudo -H -s" == "Start a root shell and set the $HOME env to /root" > > > > > > There's also sudo -i for much the same purpose. > > > > Yeh, I've had mixed success with that switch. Seems every sudo I use > > supports > > "-H -s" but only the Linux variants support "-i"...which sux when you > > divide > > your time between Solaris, the BSD's and Linux, then rsync the same .bashrc > > between all of them :P > > All of which doesn't quite answer my original question, which was > (restating it slightly): > > This is a server, only I access it, and everything I do on it is done as > root. I ssh [EMAIL PROTECTED], then su - > > So what is the advantage of su -i over simply activating the root > account?
All the cool kids are doing it? <grin> Practically, not *everything* that you do on the machine is root-worthy -- some things you might *like* to do as root, but probably could get away without it. By the principle of least-privilege, if you can do it as an ordinary user, you should do it as an ordinary user. Otherwise one day you'll be muttering around, mistype "rm -rf a/*" as "rm -rf a /*" and we'll hear the swearing from four suburbs away. Computers do the wrong thing much faster than they do the right thing... - Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
