Working as root
In order for the system administrator to perform his many duties, he can assume super-user privileges to perform tasks not normally available to the average user of the system. The superuser performs these tasks as user root. root is a special user account that is available on every UNIX system. This special user has full access to the system. The system ignores all permissions when responding to commands from the root user, providing read, write, and execute permissions to every file and device known to the system.
What does the power of root mean in practical terms? The command rm -rf / run as root could delete the entire system. It also means that root has access to all data. Complete access is helpful for backing up and restoring ...
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