[TUHS] Why root user name?

Warren Toomey wkt at tuhs.org
Thu Sep 17 05:50:39 AEST 2015


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



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