Not Remembering Root Password

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2009-03-05 at 23:33 -0700, Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
> Kevin Kofler wrote:
> 
> > Giving out blanket sudo access to a user with no password prompt (not 
> even
> > user password) means that user is effectively root. At that point I really
> > wonder what's the point of having a separate user account (other than
> > working around broken apps/libs which refuse running as root)... I'd
> > suggest not setting up your sudoers that way.
> 
> That has occurred to me, but it's my computer and I'm the only user, so 
> password or not, I am BOTH me and root, anyway.
> 
> Do you really think it matters? What could happen, aside from making me 
> think a few nanoseconds longer before executing a command?

Exactly the argument MS used to bandy about when trying to justify the
fact that MS-DOS has no concept of user privileges. They've since wised
up somewhat, but the whole UAC mess is a consequence of not doing it
right from the beginning.

To sum up: privileges are there to protect you both from malice and from
idiotic mistakes. If you're the only user, you get to be the idiot from
time to time.

poc