On Sunday, November 10, 2002, at 07:53 PM, Steve Holroyd wrote: > On 10/11/02 7:09 am, "Dale Goodvin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Saturday, November 9, 2002, at 06:20 PM, Charles Martin wrote: >>> Just a little reminder: operating in "root" mode is STRONGLY advised >>> against unless you are a world-class UNIX head, and most of them >>> would >>> tell you the same thing: BAD IDEA for anything other than temporary >>> repairing of things. >> Well. Apple also for better or worse made it *necessary* to do some >> things via the "root" mode--why, i don't know! > While I know some Unix, I am certainly not a "world-class UNIX head" > and > should not have to log in as "root" to carry out relatively basic > operations. But if Apple design things that way?
Can't really blame Apple, unless you fault them for adopting the unix kernal for their latest generation of operating system (but Apple's flirtation with unix goes all the way back to the 70's or 80's with A/UX). And it is in the nature of unix to have a "root" account, just like Win32 (NT/2K/XP) has the "administrator" account. It would be difficult to have a multi-user system without an all powerful account to administrate and fix things. I think Apple has done a relatively elegant implementation of some really thorny "root" account issues. Most of the time it is not necessary to even know about "root". Compared to almost all other unix like systems out there (a lot too) -- from the enterprise level (Solaris, HPUX, AIX DigitalUnix) to the personal level (the many Linux flavors) and everything in-between (Mach, BSD, Caldera) -- OSX has the most user-oriented and sensible design. Now everyone must think unix is a monster -- yes it is and thus it's losing territory to WinNT/2K. But it is a good monster, that has been misunderstood and exploited by greedy people. Now there are some shortcomings with OSX distribution, and seeing how young it is, there are opportunities for maturity. Hopefully this is where the Darwin OpenSource community would create some user friendly apps to address user management issues like permissions and just as importantly -- groups. Or if Apple is working on it... to hurry up and release these utilities. Also, an easy to understand primer about planning OSX for multiple login account users. Anyways, if there are any constructive comments which I can make, let me try now. The assumptions here are: (a) The first account created is the account to administer the machine (not "root" but in the same group). (b) If multiple accounts are to be created, then the person that is most familiar and most likely to be enhancing/modifying the machine will be the "primary" user of the first account. (c) All non-primary users that do not need to enhance/modify the machine should not have administrative rights; this ensure that this user is not in the same group as the primary user. nah, I give up. This would end up a real long message (if it aint that already). Maybe someone else knows of something else out there that will do a descent job of explaining in real understandable language, what are permissions and how to use them. Sorry to have you all read this far and then to wham let you down. Next time you are in Tokyo, I'll treat some beers -- know of some good places. - Les -- The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 580 Printers - new at $69 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> iMac List info: <http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:imac-list@;mail.maclaunch.com> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:imac-list-off@;mail.maclaunch.com> For digest mode, email: <mailto:imac-list-digest@;mail.maclaunch.com> Subscription questions: <mailto:listmom@;lemlists.com> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/imac-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
