RE: to root or not to root

Hear! Hear!

This is a issue I see with both Opie and standard Familiar/X implementations
on iPaq! Running *everything* as root does away with the security
infrastructure already built into Linux. It also makes hiding & locking
down files very hard, and multi-user implementations almost impossible.
You're reduced to "security by obscurity".

One place I potentially see Linux/Opie becoming *very* popular is in the
industrial world where businesses need to connect floor workers to central
databases via wireless net. Custom apps could be easily written on Linux to
meet specific business needs. However, I'd want user login sessions for
accountablility and I wouldn't want my floor workers to be able to really
mess up their employer's PDA. (Believe me, if they have access they
*always* find a way.)

Yes, Linux is flexible enough that businesses *could* write their own custom
implementations to meet their needs, but the first rule of maintenance
simplification is to deviate as little as possible from Out-O-Box OS
configurations. Businesses want to focus on making money, not re-writing
operating systems.

I *truly* hope I'm not starting a flame war here! Fantastic work has been
done on both Familiar/X and Opie that make them very competitive against
both Palm and WinCE. However, no major PDA OS has the security capabilities
that Linux does and I'm just surprised that both projects seem to have
turned their backs on one of Linux's biggest strengths.

My $0.02 rant of the day,

Calvin
calvin.cannon_at_avnet.com

----------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 14:01:08 +0200
From: Paolo Supino <paolo_at_optivera.com>
To: opie_at_handhelds.org
Subject: [Opie] to root or not to root

Hi

    When I installed opie I noticed that it runs as root.
Until yesterday it didn't bother me too much (I knew better
than to monkey around with it) but yesterday I showed a
friend of mind opie and after he opened the terminal he's
self destructive tendency ran: 'rm -rf /'. The rest of the
story is obvious :( Now It burns in my bones that opie runs
as root. Is there a plan to make it as anything but root?

        Paolo
Received on Tue Jun 18 2002 - 16:53:35 EDT