Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3437 mails)

[Sloan <joe@xxxxxxxxxx>]

John Andersen wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 7:53 AM, Carlos E. R.
> <robin.listas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>   
> > Notice that the user to be added to the group "root" is in fact the owner
> > and root for the system. If he wants to do anything a normal user can't do,
> > he simply logs in as root or uses "su". There is no new danger,
> >     
>
> So you are saying a user added to the group "root" would not impose a danger
> of this user unwittingly running rm -Rf / and nuking the system?
>   

Nope, it significantly reduces the danger. Simply being a member of the 
root group would not allow one to remove / since that would require 
write access, which isn't somehow automatically conferred just because a 
user in the root group.

Secondly, since this user is already the admin & owner of the machine, 
he already has the root password. So, rather than allowing him read 
access to the log files through a group addition, you'd rather have the 
user log in as root, where he really *could* rm -rf /

So, how is that safer?

Joe


--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx