Is running as root *that* dangerous?

[GNU/br0wni3]

I mean, im not surfing the net (i got a winmodem! yay! :D), so basically im just fooling around and tinkering with my system locally... im not planning to get online as soon as i get a linmodem , either.. i want to get to know much much better my system, how does it work, and secure it a little, and then go out and play in the outside world.

So, for me, is that much of a risk logging and running as root normally? i rarely use my "normal" user account, i always login as root...

What do ya'll think?

thanks! :D
br0wni3

[vvx]

Obviously without network access it's not near as dangerous, if you ever get network access you'll have a bad habit to break. Ofcourse, you will have no protection from .. yourself. If you accidentally screw something up when using the linux box permissions won't keep you from fudging it up. Why do you really need to run as root? Just use 'su' to change to root when you need to run something as root and exit after you're done.

[jbstew32]

well yes...
as root you have the power to successfully edit config files, recompile the kernel, etc... but you also run the risk of accidently deleting needed files (ie. vmlinuz or inittab) or even worse, accidently typing rm -rf /* :)

Running root is not advised on a normal basis. I suggest logging in as a normal user, customizing that to hell, and then only suing when you need to chmod or vi something.... I think most everyone will agree with that. It's really the best thing to do. On most systems, if you were to type rm -rf /* as root, you probably would not be warned, and your Hard Drive would automagically have LOTS of free space :D

[GNU/br0wni3]

thanks for all the input..

and yeh, i was aware of all that.. about the dangers or removing the hell out of my system, or destroying it by accidentaly removing something...

Guess i'll start logging in as normal user then. :)

Oh, but i do have a question... once i tried (As normal user), to "su" myself to root to shutdown my system.

Linux won't let me do it! it said "bash: shutdown: command not found"

Do i need to logout, relogin as root, to shutdown effectively?

thanks a million... :D

br0wni3

[X_console]

When you "su" to root, you don't get root's environmental variables. Normal users don't have /sbin in their path. This is why it says "shutdown" can't be found. To get root's environment variables, do "su -" instead. Or if you just want to shutdown the computer as a normal user: "su -c 'shutdown -h now'"

[masa36]

For me running as root is necessary because when I don't run as root, nothing works. Not that anything works even as root at the moment, but as another user, nothing works.