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It is also common for filesystems to reserve a small percentage to the root user. I think the ext4 default is still 5% (which can be quite a bit more than 1GB on modern drives!)



I haven't used root directly for over a decade. Modern usage is to log in as an unprivileged user, and to use sudo for all root operations.


Haha, I'm going to steal that!


What’s your point here? Using sudo is using root.


If you can't log in as user because resources are reserved for root... you can't sudo.


I think you missed the joke here


I don't think they were joking?

I personally tend to leave a root shell open (and both my feet remain largely hole-free to this day), but it's pretty common advice, to avoid accidentally typing something unfortunate like rm ./* into the wrong shell


Yeah, no. If you're going to be doing `rm /` you might as well do `sudo rm /` just as easily. It's the same security model, and honestly the distinction is quite funny.


No, there's a distinction if you look again. People don't accidentally type sudo in front of commands, but people do type things into the wrong window, or the wrong tab.


> People don't accidentally type sudo in front of commands

And you're basing this assumption off...?


Why, I am acutely tuned to the hivemind, of course.


There is no joke here.


I missed the joke too. Care to share?


sudo is equivalent to root


But it’s not. It’s a subset of what root can do.

The entire purpose of the /etc/sudoers file is to configure which users have access to sudo and which commands they can use.

Your top comment’s parent didn’t say the ssh login user had all sudo permissions. For best security, there should be many users which each have different limited permissions. Navigating the multiple `sudo su` is frustrating but has a purpose.


The entire purpose of the /etc/sudoers file is to configure which users have access to sudo and which commands they can use.

In all of my career I had seen that at one company. Everyone else just leaves is unrestricted. I would be impressed to see sudo used the way it was intended in more places. Some places even use passwordless sudo and ssh multiplexing which together with simple phishing give unfettered and unlogged access to production.


Yup. 'tune2fs -m0' has saved my bacon more than once.




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