FIRST AND FOREMOST: SORRY, i think my mind was wandering a little beyond the original point of the thread to begin with. your real question was: why shouldn't i be logged on as root to go on internet.... (brief but to the point) as a summary of what everybody else has said, and then some more input on my own, you have to look at how important your system is to you, and how much you are willing to risk getting hacked. there are a lot of little script-kiddies out there who search around the internet looking for guest accounts, test accounts etc. if they find ANY account on a system, and are able to break into it they then attempt to get root (obviously). some things can be done, including reading of im-properly setting log file permissions. ex: say user test has permissions to read and write to your log file, then they can see that the user root logs in a lot, they delete the entry of them logging in. This of course can also be done with finger as well (at least to see when login was last performed) They then replace a common file masked by it's original contents so you run it (like ls, more, less, adduser, YaST, startx)... the command allows them to be added to the root group! they now have access to the machine and are ready to cause total system failure, which as you probably know, or could've guessed loss in business transactions, cost in repairs, you know the drill. now of course there are countermeasures to take as well, like typing in full path commands ( like /bin/ls -l -a ./) instead of just ls. that however gets tedious. The best thing to do with power is to leave it alone. ryan --since all my writing is just a jumble of words jotted down in a new window, it's now your job to organize these thoughts and hope that you can make some logical sense out of the matter. Why? Because I can't!-- -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/