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RE: Best explanation why NOT to run as administrator/root
Subject:RE: Best explanation why NOT to run as administrator/root From:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> To:Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> Date:Wed, 1 May 2013 13:44:11 -0400
In my experience, it's safer to run as a normal user for everyday tasks, and then if an action requires Admin/root, you intentionally elevate or provide the Admin/root password for just that incident. It makes people more mindful of their actions if actions that you take with Admin/root privileges are rare and require on-the-spot authentication ritual.
Only on rare occasions is it necessary to actually log into an Administrator/root session, especially for a server that's being used by just two people.
At least most Linux distros have the GUI defaulting to some sort of hand-waving desktop/background (like a red wallpaper with lit-fuse bombs), so you don't likely forget that you are logged in as something other than an ordinary user.
So, on the evidence, to-date (unless a juicy post got caught in spam filters), nobody knows of an expert site or blog that lays out chapter and verse in a persuasive fashion? I poked around Microsoft sites for a while and didn't see anything really useful for my purpose.
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Chung
Sent: May-01-13 12:01 PM
To: McLauchlan, Kevin
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Best explanation why NOT to run as administrator/root
I totally hear you, Kevin. I still think you should take a backup of the complete VM with all your apps and updates, and I anything happens, restore from that.
Once a month, open the clean VM to update everything and save a new backup.
Every so often, back up the working VM. This gives you multiple restoration points when something bad happens.
In my experience, most OSes are virtually useless unless you run as an admin (if not THE admin). On Mac it's worse, because only the user who installed an app can update that app.
Phil could probably help me get around that one.
-Tony
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