17 Sep
2015
17 Sep
'15
5:14 p.m.
Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
As I was dropping off to sleep last night, I wondered
why the superuser
account on Unix is called root.
There's a hierarchy of directories and files beginning at the tree root /.
There's a hierarchy of processes rooted with init. But there's no hierarchy
of users, so why the moniker "root"?
Any ideas?
From BWK:
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2015 05:35:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Kernighan <bwk(a)CS.Princeton.EDU>
To: arnold(a)skeeve.com
Subject: Re: why the name "root" for userid 0?
I will speculate, without knowledge, that it's because the
super user can access the files in the root directory.
Ken would know, though perhaps not answer...
Brian
Maybe some of the former BTLers could ask him? :-)
Thans,
Arnold