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A comment on Be A Man, Run As The Root Account.

Re:Be A Man, Run As The Root Account by mlLK on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @03:00PM (#307382)
This is probably the best advice for linux/unix nubs; you will never learn what a computer is really for until you meet the machine face-to-face via a terminal. I don't know how many times it took me to corrupt my package-manager or butcher some config file until I realized the advantages of running a VM, but, yes, the article is spot-on because all learning, or understanding for that matter, is iterating failure.
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Re:Be A Man, Run As The Root Account by LogicHoleFlaw on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @04:35PM (#307505)
I have to disagree. This article gives very dangerous advice for the noobs.

It encourages shaving.

How are they supposed to attain competence if they can't even grow out a guru beard?

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Re:Be A Man, Run As The Root Account by mlLK on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @05:19PM (#307550)
I like your shaving metaphor, but how is a new user coming from a Windows XP ever going to respect what an admin account can really do w/o ever test-driving what root can really do, given that I'm sure most Windows users are running as an Administrator. I guess my point is, given all the times I've screwed myself w/ root, is that root is only dangerous in context of somebody else, while the only cost of seeing what something does in Linux is your time and your file-system. Otherwise, how can one ever appreciate how delicate and fragile a system really is w/o a loving system administrator to cradle her in his key-strokes. ;)
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Re:Be A Man, Run As The Root Account by silentbicycle on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @09:03PM (#307755)
Well, they could read the documentation.

Or, they could get hit by script kiddies that keep looking for old vulnerabilities in some daemon they ran as root.

  $ cat /var/log/authlog
  ...
  Sep 13 16:57:31 lucien sshd[16283]: Invalid user webmaster from 218.234.21.151
  Sep 13 16:57:31 lucien sshd[290]: input_userauth_request: invalid user webmaster
  Sep 13 16:57:31 lucien sshd[16283]: Failed password for invalid user webmaster from 218.234.21.151 port 56992 ssh2
  Sep 13 16:57:31 lucien sshd[290]: Received disconnect from 218.234.21.151: 11: Bye Bye
  Sep 13 16:57:34 lucien sshd[12747]: User root from 218.234.21.151 not allowed because not listed in AllowUsers
  Sep 13 16:57:34 lucien sshd[2144]: input_userauth_request: invalid user root
  Sep 13 16:57:34 lucien sshd[12747]: Failed password for invalid user root from 218.234.21.151 port 57162 ssh2
  Sep 13 16:57:34 lucien sshd[2144]: Received disconnect from 218.234.21.151: 11: Bye Bye
  Sep 13 16:57:36 lucien sshd[20586]: Invalid user ftp from 218.234.21.151
  Sep 13 16:57:36 lucien sshd[3604]: input_userauth_request: invalid user ftp
  Sep 13 16:57:36 lucien sshd[20586]: Failed password for invalid user ftp from 218.234.21.151 port 57344 ssh2
  Sep 13 16:57:37 lucien sshd[3604]: Received disconnect from 218.234.21.151: 11: Bye Bye
  Sep 13 16:57:39 lucien sshd[14276]: Invalid user sales from 218.234.21.151
  Sep 13 16:57:39 lucien sshd[25572]: input_userauth_request: invalid user sales
  Sep 13 16:57:39 lucien sshd[14276]: Failed password for invalid user sales from 218.234.21.151 port 57514 ssh2
  Sep 13 16:57:40 lucien sshd[25572]: Received disconnect from 218.234.21.151: 11: Bye Bye
  ...
(My firewall blocks these losers after two minutes and I still have endless logs like this.)

Learning the first way sucks less.

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Re:Be A Man, Run As The Root Account by tyler on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:12PM (#307609)
It's all just an abstraction. You could sub in any of the other layers of abstraction in place of "terminal" and it would make just as much (and little) sense.
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Re:Be A Man, Run As The Root Account by tjr on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @04:33PM (#307500)
Interesting side-effect of using * pairs for italics.
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Re:Be A Man, Run As The Root Account by mlLK on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @04:45PM (#307514)
lol, ya yikes, is there no escape character for using * ?
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