[TUHS] Why root user name?

John Cowan cowan at mercury.ccil.org
Thu Sep 17 06:11:45 AEST 2015


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 at 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)



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