Talk:Superuser

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Did I dream that 'root' in the very early days was 'god'? (No I don't mean pre-computer!) Rich Farmbrough 21:32, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Always crack 127.0.0.1. They'll never know it was you Pilk 02:14, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] falken

Hi. What's the deal with the "falken in NetBSD" part? AFAIK, UID 0 have always had only a root/toor account by default. And falken (previously falcon) was a disabled by default, non-UID 0 user (inherited from 4.4BSD-lite I think) with wargames(6) as a shell. So it's a joke, people. If you were to login as falken, it would start a game (but that user is not even there anymore; http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/etc/master.passwd?rev=1.19&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup). toor is also there on most *BSDs, and other UNICES, but it is usually disabled by default (and it is on {Open,Free,Net}BSD). The toor page says "It is also the default superuser in few Operating Systems like NetBSD.", and this is also misleading IMNSHO. NetBSD is not different from other UNICES in regard to the root user.

[edit] Windows NT/2000/XP/Longhorn

As far as I'm aware, under these operating systems, by default, the user named Administrator is a superuser through a combination of privileges given to:

  • the Administrator user account,
  • the Everyone object and
  • the Administrators user group.

However, the user called Administrator is not necessarily a superuser. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 04:38, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

  • This article does already explain how your understanding is wrong. Uncle G 11:21, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

[edit] Modifications

Anyone mind if I make some serious modifications to this page?

A superuser account is an account that exists outside the scope of the system's security policy, hence in UNIX root can modify files that the permissions bits give him no access to.

Single-user systems like DOS, OS <X, Win95/98/ME, and BeOS lack superuser accounts since they lack security policies. Systems featuring a reference monitor or labeled security like WinNT/2k/XP/2003, SE-Linux, Trusted Solaris, STOP, SecureOS, and HP-VV also lack superuser accounts as such an exception to the security policy would defeat their whole point.

Cheers

Robert 71.129.205.254 10:23, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I support those changes, Robert, although I can't speak to their accuracy WRT Windows (perhaps the only people who truly could have signed NDAs to not do so). The existing introduction (2nd para) veers off on a tangent about systems which DON'T have a superuser account, which doesn't make it particularly clear. Xurizaemon (talk) 05:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] runas

>To run a program as a superuser in Windows XP and probably later versions of Windows, use the command runas. works also on Windows 2000

[edit] Charlie root

It seems that many people do not know why root has the name Charlie. The name comes from the co-creator of the Berkeley Systems Distribution of UNIX, Charles B. Haley. His instructions (co-authored with Dennis Ritchie) on how to install a UNIX system on the PDP11 also give an explanation as to why "root" is "root". It's all about the filesystem.

See http://minnie.tuhs.org/PUPS/Setup/v7_setup.ps.gz and http://mcs.open.ac.uk/cbh46/career_summary.htm

Also, someone above talking about the "god" user is mistaken. "God" was a password often used for the root account for those people who preferred not to use the default "root" password.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.110.230.46 (talk)