Re: [NTLK] root on OSX

From: Laurent Daudelin (laurent.daudelin_at_verizon.net)
Date: Wed Apr 16 2003 - 06:39:05 PDT


on 16/04/03 07:14, Robert Benschop at rbenschop_at_euronet.nl wrote:

> On woensdag, apr 16, 2003, at 10:38 Europe/Amsterdam, Matthew Robinson
> wrote:
>> Having spent many years unix adminning I have the following advice.
>> day2day use: be a cretin user - have little or no permissions to do
>> anything
>> to anything but your own files
>> installation of new software - root - and take it steady!
>
> Two questions from a Unix/Mac OS X novice/Newton user:
>
> I am Admin at all times, never considered this dangerous, should I?
>
> Why would I have to be Root for installation of new software? My Admin
> password seems all I need...

You should not need root to install new software. The way that Apple
designed OS X, you are an administrator because you're member of the group
admin, which has the rights to a lot of stuff that regular users don't.

Now, I've seen bad designed installer that will let you install things that
are owned by root without sufficient privileges for members of group admin.
What happens in this case is if you ever want to touch this piece of
software, you will have to su root in a terminal to change the privileges.
That's why I use root. I also did setup a ColorSync profile when logged
under root so now, everytime I restart my PowerBook, it loads this profile
automatically. Same for the brightness and volume (I think).

-Laurent.

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Laurent Daudelin   AIM/iChat: LaurentDaudelin    <http://nemesys.dyndns.org>
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