Can I use the Administrator Account?

[mrlucifer]

Hey guys and gals. I am installing a Redhat Server and I was wondering do I go ahead and use the Admin account for everyday use or is it safer to create a new account with certain rights. Your info will greatly be appreciated. Thanks!

[MrLinus]

Better off using a regular user account and then using su - to switch to the root user when needed (installs, etc.). I have seen, on live huge production servers, people logged in as root, at the / and then type rm -rf *. It's not a pretty picture to see an IT Admin cry in their Coca-Cola bottle.

Better safe than sorry.

[mrlucifer]

I am a idiot. I totally forgot about the SU command. Now I know. With my regular user do you recommend any permssion changes or should I keep it at default.

[.:front2back:.]

Leaving it at default shouldn't have any problems with that, just use the Admin privileges only when it's absolutly necessary..

..::front2back::..

[Relyt]

I make a couple of different users just for myself. I like to play around in the computer, so when I do mess it up real good, delete one and copy the profile etc., from the clone to make another. Reminds me of the SuSE 7.3, when you logged in as root, the default background was a bunch of exploding bombs on a red backdrop. Kinda a reminder of where you were. Well one day I changed it because I was a little thick in the cranal cavity I guess, and thought I'd never mess it up. Some things are unrecoverable......lol Had to reinstall the whole os.

[lessthanzero]

I tend to agree with the above posters.

Whilst logging in as root for day-to-day activities is quite the inviting and the easy way to go...in the end, you'll most likely wish you hadn't. I wouldn't confine this to just *nix either by the way; logging into your Windows box as administrator (local or domain) is equally as bad.

It is much better to develop the habit of:

a. renaming the admin/root account asap after an install.
b. creating "user" account(s) to employ for day-to-day ops
c. creating a dummy admin/root account that has zero privileges.

As previous posters pointed out, using su in a *nix environment is easy and straightforward once you develop the habit. Don't forget - Windows has the run as service/command built into all OSs starting with win2k.

Develop the habit now, before it is too late

Cheers,
<0