Multiple Root ID's considered evil?

[John Chambers]

In article <1989Sep13.082607.981 at twwells.com>, bill at twwells.com (T. William Wells) writes:
> In article <1723 at convex.UUCP> tchrist at convex.com (Tom Christiansen) writes:
> : Some site are known to have multiple uid 0 accounts so not
> : everyone needs to know the root password.  I seem to recall
> : that this is considered a poor idea for security reasons.
> : Could someone please explain why?
> 
> If done for the reason you suggest, that is an _awful_ idea! Root is
> root. Anyone who gets uid 0 is god. 

Not necessarily.  On several systems, I've installed special packages
for admin purposes that have to be super-users (have you ever tried to
do a backup in a non-root id?); the account had its own "shell" for the
use of novices, that held their hands and led them through some menus
that let them do only a few things.  It's pretty easy to make this quite
secure, as long as you don't let them do things like run a shell or vi
or such.  (Actually, I always include a shell escape; I just don't mention
it in the documentation.  Anyone who posts to this group would probably
guess the syntax the first time; the operators never guess it. ;-)

Another reason that I like to make new super-users is that I find it
much easier (and safer) to work in a familiar environment.  If I make
myself a super-user account with my home directory and the same shell,
then I don't get surprised by commands doing different things when I'm
su than when I'm myself.  Well, not quite; I won't say what I'd like 
to do to the geniuses who decide that commands like ls should behave
differently for user 0 than for all other users.  Let's just say that
it has on occasion had some very unpleasant consequences, which wouldn't
have happened if it had ignored the .* files like it's supposed to.  
It's especially annoying to think that the little monster wastes cpu 
cycles every time it's called, just so it can do this to me....

Recently I had a bit of fun at a place where I was doing some consulting.
I had the usual user account, and after a couple of weeks, I was asked
if I needed the root password for some things they'd asked me to do. I
said no; I'd already made myself a super-user account, and I preferred
to use it, since its environment was set up like I liked it.  They were
duly impressed....

[I'm just a boy named 'su' ;-]

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saying