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.

Comments

Kludge?

[Hard_Code]

Not to start a flame fest here, but isn't a single 'superuser' entity, which has special-case security (e.g. has automatic ownership and access to all files regardless of permissions), indicative of a mis-designed security architecture?

What about capabilities, or mandatory access controls? Or some sort of framework that incorporates root privelages, instead of setting them aside as a special case. I've never been comfortable with the idea that the security system was only for "normal" users and didn't apply to a specific user called 'root' (or id 0), which, if compromised, you are entirely hosed.