<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.9.3"> </HEAD> <BODY> On Wed, 2005-12-21 at 23:22 -0800, Mike Bird wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> <PRE> > The point of this is to avoid the need for a root account, which > damages security. All Unix systems, including all versions of Ubuntu, have a root account. A root account does not damage security. The people on this list disagree as to whether a system is more or less secure when sudo is used for everything. I think we can all agree it's less convenient. </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> Not at all. My 78 year old father can do a few admin tasks because gksudo is setup and he KNOWS his own password. It also means he can't be permanently logged in as root and forget and do damage to the install. When he had windows with admin access I used to reinstall between 1 to 3 times a year. Now I upgrade and I've NEVER had to reinstall. I personally *choose* to set a root password on my on desktop and server, I don't need it, I'm just paranoid incase my account gets corrupt. That said, I could use a recover CD but a separate admin account is easier to just have around. I don't need it to admin the system. I can get a root terminal either by sudo, su, or logging in as root (never need this last). Simple day to day admin I do with single sudo commands or sometimes with Webmin. More complicated application configs I use sudo or Su to give a full root shell. I'm not a guru, but I do manage a few services mta, imap, pop, apache, samba, webmin etc.. Bottom line, Linux/Unix is SO flexible there's a dozen ways to do things, some more technically correct than others but not all are wrong, so mindset, individual convenience etc, play a large part. For my father sudo is a great convenience and he needs to know less. For me, I keep a root password in the background but find sudo fine as long as I can get a root terminal when I need one. <TABLE CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0" WIDTH="100%"> <TR> <TD> Kind Regards Russell ================== www.windsorcycles.com.au sales@windsorcycles.com.au ph. 02 4577 3209 bikes.no-ip.info Linux user #369094 ================== </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </BODY> </HTML>