16 Sep
2015
16 Sep
'15
7:50 p.m.
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?
Cheers, Warren
16 Sep
16 Sep
8:11 p.m.
Warren Toomey scripsit:
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"?
Either because / was root's home directory (until /root was invented),
or because only root could typically write /. If anybody remembers otherwise,
they are not talking.
--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
Andrew Watt on Microsoft: Never in the field of human computing has so
much been paid by so many to so few! (pace Winston Churchill)
17 Sep
17 Sep
11:14 a.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
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Warren Toomey