kerouac
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response 100 of 110:
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May 11 00:33 UTC 1996 |
Selena, my perspective is different than yours or most here...I dont know
any of these folks personally so Im more detached. So when I speak of
there being "too many roots", I'm really speaking in the abstract. I
suppose we wouldnt need gun control if we all knew each other and everyone
were saints.
I simply think in the abstract that many newbies might be uncomfortable
if they knew that 11 people as opposed to 2 or 3 can read all their files and
all their email. I've been on here long enough to know that many of staff
work hard and I'm perfectly comfortable with who has root right now, but
you cant expect this from new users.
It isnt a matter of who can be trusted with root, it is a matterof who
really needs it. Cfadmin doesnt need root. Webmaster doesnt need root.
Helpmaster doesnt need root. (correct me if Im mistaken) I guess its
nice to have lots of roots so people are always around to do re-booting
and kick off idle logins. But these are minor things. Isnt root
supposed to be reserved for those doing the actual sysop functions?
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mdw
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response 103 of 110:
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May 11 06:51 UTC 1996 |
cfadm doesn't need (or necessarily have) root. The webmaster sort of
does, but mostly to (a) deal with the daemon (which can, in fact, be
described as a "sysop" function), and (b) various user service issues
(which also fit that awfully vague term, "sysop function"). We
certainly don't have a "helpmaster" per se - no reason to give somebody
we don't have root. Most of the people who have root are also people we
trust with dungeon keys and therefore, de facto, have access to
everyone's files anyways.
There are two policies we could have followed with respect to root
access. (1), be very paranoid about it, restrict it to a few very
overworked fools, and try to come up with tools to farm out at least
*some* of the effort, or (2) assume people who can be trusted with
*some* of the system can also be trusted with the rest, and assume
anyone who can't be fully trusted, shouldn't be trusted at all. So many
things, like physical access to the machine, ability to install
software, and all that, turn out to be basically equivalent to each
other, that we've ended up deciding that (2) is less work than (1).
"We" in this case means the founders and early staff members. No system
is fool-proof, and there *have* been a few minor incidents that have
served to remind us that we need to take care, but on the whole, I don't
think we've managed any worse, we've certainly gotten much more done
than we possibly could have otherwise, and there are actually ways in
which having *more* roots is *beneficial* to security. That means more
eyes to watch to see that things get done, and also more eyes to catch
each other's mistakes and oversights.
My guess is that the average "newbie" neither knows nor cares how the
system is run, and that the fraction of any of total users, newbies, or
old-timers who care at *all* about system security is very small. I am
constantly amazed at people who think they *have* to tell you their
password via e-mail.
Certainly a "rogue root" is a possibility, but I would like to think
that the rest of us would figure it out pretty fast, and if staff didn't
do something first, I would like to think that the board, or the members
at large, would take action. In the final analysis, that's the only
real solution to the problem; if staff, board, & members are willing to
tolerate a rogue root, then no solution, no matter how elaborate, is
going to work.
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srw
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response 104 of 110:
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May 11 16:15 UTC 1996 |
I agree with Marcus about most of that, but I would point out that robh is our
helpmaster. This job does not require root, but it is not the only thing
Rob does. If he didn't have root, we'd all have a lot more work to do.
A webmaster does not require root, but a sysadmin must then handle the web
server. In the case of Grex, Rob acts primarily as the webmaster, and I
manage the web server. Rob has root but doesn't use it for this. These little
job assignments sometimes change.
Oh, and BTW Kerouac, Selena doesn't know any of us personally, as far as I
know.
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