[P1] Logging in as root

[Tom R. no spam]

<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>

On Sun, 2 Feb 2003, Meg St. Clair wrote:

> This may seem like a really dumb question. I've heard all the admonitions
> against logging in as root because bad things might happen. I have, on a
 . . .
> what bad things am I going to make happen? How bad could it be? Could I do
> something that a reinstall won't fix? I'm really not trying to be flip.