Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Regardless of the name, the superuser always has a user ID of 0. The root user can do many things an ordinary user cannot, such as changing the ownership of files and binding to network ports numbered below 1024. The name root may have originated because root is the only user account with permission to modify the root directory of a Unix
The command su, including the Unix permissions system and the setuid system call, was part of Version 1 Unix.Encrypted passwords appeared in Version 3. [5] The command is available as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.
Unlike the command su, users supply their personal password to sudo (if necessary) [18] rather than that of the superuser or other account. This allows authorized users to exercise altered privileges without compromising the secrecy of the other account's password. [19]
The superuser is an authority level assigned to system administrators on most computer operating systems. In Unix and related operating systems, this level is also called root and has all access rights in the system, including changing ownership of files. In pre-Windows XP and NT systems (such as DOS and Windows 9x), all users are effectively ...
A command line tool for Unix. su (substitute user) allows users to switch the terminal to a different account by entering the username and password of that account. If no user name is given, the operating system's superuser account (known as "root") is used, thus providing a fast method to obtain a login shell with
The password file maps textual user names to UIDs. UIDs are stored in the inodes of the Unix file system , running processes, tar archives, and the now-obsolete Network Information Service. In POSIX -compliant environments, the shell command id gives the current user's UID, as well as more information such as the user name, primary user group ...
The user “root” is a special user, something called super-user, which can do anything at all on the system. This high degree power is necessary to fully administer a UNIX system, but it also allows its user to make a mistake and cause system problems.
One solution is a "shadow" password file to hold the password hashes separate from the other data in the world-readable passwd file. For local files, this is usually /etc/shadow on Linux and Unix systems, or /etc/master.passwd on BSD systems; each is readable only by root. (Root access to the data is considered acceptable since on systems with ...