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Understanding system administration"

The superuser account

The superuser login (also known as root) is a special account for performing system maintenance tasks. It gives the system administrator unusual privileges that ordinary users do not have, such as accessing all files in the system, and executing privileged commands. Many tasks presented in the administrative guides require that the system administrator be logged in as the superuser. To do this, the system administrator must know the superuser password created during the installation of your system.

Log in as the superuser only to perform system maintenance tasks. Even if the system administrator is the only user of the system, that person should create a user account for day-to-day work, reserving the superuser account for system maintenance tasks only.


WARNING: Few users should know the superuser password. Misuse of the superuser powers by naive users can result in a loss of data, programs, and even the operating system itself.


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SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 -- 05 June 2007