that darned ROOT problem

[Mario Vukelic]

On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:23 -0400, Matan Nassau wrote:
> The fact that you were not informed during install is not ok

Just to set the record straight, I'm not the OP and I didn't complain.
In fact, the use of sudo was probably the second thing I knew about
Ubuntu after the distro hit the radar.

Still, the Unix way (if you want to argue on that basis, which I
personally think is useless) is that programs finish silently if they
operate successfully, but give an error message if they fail. Case in
point - find:

mario at phonic: / $ find / -type d -maxdepth 0 -name bin
find: warning: you have specified the -maxdepth option after a
non-option argument -type, but options are not positional (-maxdepth
affects tests specified before it as well as those specified after it).
Please specify options before other arguments.

mario at phonic: / $

In contrast to the Microsoft way that you needlessly bring up (just in
case you think you need to defend the Unix way from me: my first kernel
was 1.3.78 on Slackware), which is to fail without giving any useful
info, like sudo does now.

If someone tries to su to a non-existant account, su complains:

mario at phonic: / $ su doesnt_exist
Unknown id: doesnt_exist
mario at phonic: / $

If someone tries to su to root when it is disabled, it could well say
"root account disabled. See /usr/share/doc/<somepackage>/README for
info", at least the first time it is run by a user.

REgards, M