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Root 101 - Concept of Root for Newbies
Fozz writes "One of my colleagues wrote this article explaining the concept of root/super user for Unix newbies. He wrote it after looking for information like it and not finding much. His analogy of Unix and an apartment complex is one of the best metaphors I've seen for understanding multi-user OSes." If you're running any variety of Unix, you've probably been forced to learn this pretty well already, but this is a very lucid explanation to point out to curious friends / co-workers who aren't so sure.
The article says that only root can "Start and stop background processes". Any user can do that, but only root can start and stop processes belonging to other users. Perhaps that is what he meant?
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
You don't really need to restart your machine to set up the root account under OS X... there's a menu option in one of the NetInfo configuration apps to "Enable root account". Much easier than rebooting the machine, heh.
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.
the 'netsh' command in Windows will give you the equivelant functionality of ifconfig at the command-line. you can run it in interactive and script modes, too. the downside is that it's slower than ifconfig; the upside is that changes made here are permanent, whereas command-line changes in ifconfig don't persist across reboots.
By the way, that paper (referenced in Schneier's last Crypto-Gram) about privelege escalation with physical pin tumbler locks is here.
One thing that would be nice would be some sort of suid functionality, so I could tag a file to always run as a certain user no matter who it was executed by. That way I could selectively trust certain applications
/user:administrator /savecred <program>
I think you can do this (on XP) with the RUNAS command.. Something like:
runas
Throw that into a shortcut, enter the password once, and you're all set. Don't ask me where it's storing that password though.....
Just wanted to let everybody know that the "Root 101" article has been updated on the Iodynamics site. Most of the revisions are based on the comments above.
I appreciate all of the great feedback, both here and via e-mail. This article has truly been a community effort.
--DaveYou can't use the "Run As" option on the shortct properties.. You have to use the command-line RunAs.exe utility with the /savecred parameter every time you're launching the application. So you might do something like:
/user:administrator /savecred "c:\program files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
/user:domain\administrator /savecred "c:\windows\system32\mmc.exe \"C:\Program Files\Microsoft ISA Server\MSISA.MSC\""
runas
The first time it would prompt you, but after that it would just load. You have to put that whole command line into a shortcut if you want to launch it from an icon or the start menu. You can nest quotes inside the command line with a backslash - I use this on a shortcut to launch the ISA administration console:
runas.exe
A couple of links:
Hope this helps