Suppressing logins

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

I always make it a point to tell people that it is a bad idea to run your system as the priledged user. 
In short, this is one one the reasons that the worms and viruses are perpetuated. Among the other 
reasons is protection from yourself. As a system administrator (which you are with your personal 
system), how many times have you been in the wrong directory and typed rm * or something. As a 
non-priv user, your damage is minimized. As a priviledged user, you can render a system 
unusable. 

Since worms, viruses and trojans infect systems via email, as you read your email as a non-priv 
user, your chances of screwing up your whole system is minimized. 

Personally, I always use su or sudo in cases where I need to perform a priv operation, and always 
revert back to my weaker self for normal ops. I would recommend this procedure to Windows 
2000 or XP users as well. 

 
On 3 Dec 2001 at 13:19, Derek Atkins wrote:

> Well, users of NT or MacOSX certainly understand the concept of
> administrator priviledges.  OTOH, you can assign admin privs
> to any account; you don't have to be logged in as "administrator".
> 
> The easiest way I've learned to explain it to people is: Your login
> is a way for the computer to personalize itself to your likings, so
> that you and [XXX] can't have the computer look and feel how each
> of you want it to.
> 
> -derek
> 
> "Jerry Feldman" <gaf at blu.org> writes:
> 
> > As a long time Unix user, I can't conceive of a system where logins are not used. 
> > 
> > At the installfest, Pamela King wanted to know if there was a way to suppress the need for a login. 
> > (I know that I can write a replacement for login and getty) I don't know of a simple way to configure 
> > a Linux system not to require a login. I know that Pamela and many other Windows and Mac 
> > people don't understand what a login is, and the concept of a priviledged user vs. a regular user. 
> > Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
> > Associate Director
> > Boston Linux and Unix user group
> > http://www.blu.org
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss at blu.org
> > http://www.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> 
> -- 
>        Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>        Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>        URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>        warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available

Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org