Photography web hosting - 134Part I:Getting Your Feet Wet Avoiding rootThe root
134Part I:Getting Your Feet Wet Avoiding rootThe root user,also known as the superuseror just root, has access to anythingand everything on your machine. There is no blocking root from a directory, file, command, or device. Because of this factor, many Linux beginners figurethat they may as well use the root account all the time because it s so convenient. However, for lots of good reasons, you shouldn t use the root account foreveryday use: You don t always need root-level access. Root-level access is as much a curse as it is a blessing. If you mess up asa regular user, you mess up only the stuff in your account. If you mess upas the root user, you can wipe out everything all the files on your entireLinux system! That s why some Linux distributions like SuSE give you anasty red background when you re in the root account (in the GUI) asa dire warning. In fact, Mandrake doesn t even give you root as one ofthe options to select in the GUI login. SuSE doesn t give you a graphicaloption for root, but you can type it into the Username text box. Don t think that you can wipe out everything? Many experienced Linuxadministrators tell horror stories about the day they made a fatal typoor weren t paying attention to what they were doing and completelydestroyed an installation. If you send e-mail or news posts as root for anything other than seriousadministrative business, people think that you don t know what you redoing or are showing off. Root comes with too much temptation. The superuser can read otherpeople s e-mail messages and files, which introduces a few tiny ethicalissues. Linspire has a slightly different philosophy. You have only one account whenyou re using Linspire, by default. However, in the next section, I show youhow to create new accounts so that you don t have to use root or let someone who s borrowing your computer for a moment to browse the Web do it under root! Creating user accountsMost Linux distributions include a graphical interface application for creatingand managing user accounts. Here s how you can find this application foryour distribution: Fedora Core:Choose Applications.System Settings.Users And Groupsopens the User Manager.