Craig Jackson wrote:
> Wow, I must've missed that one too.  I guess I will be unprivileged as
> much as I can from now on.  I never read the BLFS book straight through
> like I did with LFS.  Does this have to do with security or does it
> actually change the functionality?
>  
> Epitome

I see two reasons for doing as much work as a unpriveleged user:
-- protect against your own mistakes, just a dumb example, if you try to
execute
   rm -rf ./   but istead type
   rm -rf /
   doing so as root will definetly kill your whole system, doing as
unpriveleged user will also do some harm, but won't kill your system if
   it is properly set up.
-- protect against mistakes/attacks of other people: if for (a dumb)
example a malicious person modifies a source package in a
   way that the configure script contains the lines
   echo "SOME MALICIOUS USER DATA" >> /etc/passwd
   echo "SOME MALICIOUS USER PASSWORD" >> /etc/shadow
   he may easily get access to your system. The thing is, a script run
as root may do everything to your system it is told to do.

As far as I can see, there is no change in functionality.

PS: Please have a look at the nettiquette rules. You are top posting and
not trimming.

Thorsten


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