WARNING: DON"T EVEN THINK OF ENABLING A ROOT ACCOUNT?

[slackrat]

I remember, way back in Warty, and maybe even breezy of an option during the expert install of enabling a root account.

Before anyone says 'thats not the ubuntu way' I've already heard that answer....my question is why it is available (or was, the live cd makes installation so much easier i havent bothered looking for an expert installer)
and what the current state of that option is.

There are two reasons for asking. One, a sysadmin friend wanted to use kubuntu for his office, including the server, but said he would only do it if he could enable root. I told him yes, it is possible, but ive hit walls when running that account in the past that hosed the system. The latest advice I find said, yes you can use it but dont even think of trying to setup a gui account for it thru kcontrol. I found that piece of advise after experimenting with a gui account under root and within a day had hosed breezy.

So, I'm looking for some background as to the real status of a root account, why its there, and whether it is still an option. I'm quite comfortable with sudo but would like more info on the whole issue, so I'm better prepared to answer questions in the future.

Btw, 'its not the ubuntu way' doesnt go over with sysadmins.....

For those of you running kubuntu for normal purposes, trust me, theres no point in it....but I still never quite got a sound answer for why it is available if its going to eventually wreck your system. The idea of a gui root made sense when i realized that kdesu conflicted with running su on a sudo based system....but is su, if enabled just as dangerous?

signed,
I can crash a testing system faster than you can :P

[claydoh]

Re: WARNING: DON"T EVEN THINK OF ENABLING A ROOT ACCOUNT?

It isn't necessarily going to 'wreck your system', it is just a possibility.
You may want to dig up some (K)Ubuntu sysadmin and ask them about it. The few sysadmins i know that use a root account (in other distros) would never login to a gui with it, so that is something, at least in the very small group I have contact with.

all an account is is a set of permissions for various tasks or access. Sudo is simply a finer grain of control over those permissions, though in Kubuntu it is a very simple setup, really. There is no real change in root's 'status', it is still an option, and if you edit settings in the login manager, root gui is still possible. OSX, btw uses sudo as well as *buntu, though that doesn't much affect sysadmins

here is some info that may be useful for a system administrator:
http://www.komar.org/pres/sudo/toc.html

[slackrat]

Re: WARNING: DON"T EVEN THINK OF ENABLING A ROOT ACCOUNT?

true, i guess it was an exaggeration to say it will wreck your system..i just always seemed to manage that in the past :-P

thanks for the link.......i noticed also, as you said, that the longer ive been with linux and bsd , the less time i seem to spend in a root or sudo shell of anykind. Perhaps some of the earlier distros i used....red hat, mandrake and pre 10 suse, made it quite easy to have a gui root account....and in those days it seemed preferably to perform root functions with a gui.....nowadays i see it as a waste of time. I guess it can take a while before we realize the konsole is our friend.

Thanks too for not coming up with stock response....that 'it just isnt done' ...i ll pass this info and whatever else i come across to the sysadmin i mentioned...

cheers