01-22-2005
Being root on a system opens you up to a lot of catastrophes, such as accidently issuing a rm -rf command, wiping your system completely clean. The reason MS Windows has problems with Virii is lack of user security. Anything and everything can be executed, and run from your account.
Root can execute any commands on the system that can damage your system. Someone could create a shell script which can force installation of trojan apps onto your system. If you were a user, then running such a script would limit the shell script from installing potentially damaging software.
With GNU/Linux, you can create many user accounts, and use su to temporarily become root, for installing packages, or better, use sudo to run installation programs.
What makes *NIX such a stable system is the file permissions, user permissions, by being root full-time you are loosing this extra security.
There is no reason you should be using your system under a root account. If you do not know how to make a user, ask that question.
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SETUID(1) General Commands Manual SETUID(1)
NAME
setuid - run a command with a different uid.
SYNOPSIS
setuid username|uid command [ args ]
DESCRIPTION
Setuid changes user id, then executes the specified command. Unlike some versions of su(1), this program doesn't ever ask for a password
when executed with effective uid=root. This program doesn't change the environment; it only changes the uid and then uses execvp() to find
the command in the path, and execute it. (If the command is a script, execvp() passes the command name to /bin/sh for processing.)
For example,
setuid some_user $SHELL
can be used to start a shell running as another user.
Setuid is useful inside scripts that are being run by a setuid-root user -- such as a script invoked with super, so that the script can
execute some commands using the uid of the original user, instead of root. This allows unsafe commands (such as editors and pagers) to be
used in a non-root mode inside a super script. For example, an operator with permission to modify a certain protected_file could use a
super command that simply does:
cp protected_file temp_file
setuid $ORIG_USER ${EDITOR:-/bin/vi} temp_file
cp temp_file protected_file
(Note: don't use this example directly. If the temp_file can somehow be replaced by another user, as might be the case if it's kept in a
temporary directory, there will be a race condition in the time between editing the temporary file and copying it back to the protected
file.)
AUTHOR
Will Deich
local SETUID(1)