[P1] Logging in as root

[Meg St. Clair]

On 2/2/03 4:48 PM, "Tom R. no spam" <tr5374 at csc.albany.edu> wrote:

> <pretentious>If you didn't create the world, or if you did
> but you don't remember the details, logging in as God can
> get you in a lot of trouble.</pretentious>  "A little bit
> of knowledge is a dangerous thing" is a well-known adage.
> In a couple of nutshells, that's why not to log in as root.
> If a reinstall is not a problem for you, then you're not
> using your computer much, or you don't mind spending a lot
> of time on frequent backups and on recreating the exact
> useful state of your pre-reinstallation computer.  :-)
> 
> What you can do, simpler and safer, is use sudo, which OSX
> has organized just so you can avoid logging in as root.  Eg,
> to delete a file (all this is command line in terminal, of
> course), just do:  "sudo rm filename"
> You will be asked for the password for an administrator user,
> and after you enter such password, the file will be removed.
> You can change file owners, permissions, etc this way, too.
> 
> The generic format is:  sudo <command> <command arguments>
> 


While I enjoyed your analogies, they don't answer the question: What exactly
will happen? I get the, "it's bad, don't do it, there are better ways". But
I was always an obnoxious child. I've never been willing to take No as an
answer with out a reason.

If I just log on as root and delete a file (which I find a lot easier to
remember how to do than the syntax of sudo), what specific bad things will
happen?

Meg