Re: Ideas for the oom problem

Hacksaw
2001-03-29T00:13:37Z

> On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 06:33:04PM -0500, Hacksaw wrote:

> Why are they logged in as root in the first place? Is there something they
> can't do over sudo?

I have the "Gnome workstation" version of rawhide (7.0.xxx) on my new laptop.
I don't see sudo. Of course, it's rawhide, but you'd think, if it were in 7.0,
it'd make it. Or maybe they decided that the gnome workstation didn't need
it... Hmmm.

> I definitely remember seeing a document saying `if you find yourself needing to
> `man foo', do it in another terminal as your non-root self'; it might or might
> not've been the SAG.

Sucks if you are trying to figure out a VT problem.

> In any case, what happened to `if you use this rope you will hang yourself'?
> There has to be a point where you abandon catering for all kinds of fool and
> get on with writing something useful, I think.

Let's accept one thing: Root, should in fact, be allowed to do anything a
regular user can. The fact that hanging is a possibility might ought to be
pointed out. I have my shell set up to tell me I'm root. But the fact is, the
typical sys-admin is essentially always logged in as root somewhere, and
changing terminals to look at man pages is sometimes not an option.

For that matter, I have often figured out that something had funny permission
problems by discovering that the problem goes away if I run a program as root.

Assuming everything root is doing must be sacrosanct is a pipe dream.
Assuming everything a regular user is doing is expendable is BOFH think.

I do agree that you have to draw a line. I'm just saying that's the wrong one.

> > I completely agree that doing general work as root is a bad idea. I do most
> > root things via sudo. It sure would be nice if all the big dists supplied it
> > (Hey, RedHat! You listening?) as part of their normal set.
>
> RH have been listening since v7.0.

Good. I hope it comes out well in 7.1, considering my experience with rawhide.