On Wed, Feb 04, 2015 at 08:18:23AM -0800, Keith Keller wrote:> On 2015-02-04, James B. Byrne <byrnejb at harte-lyne.ca> wrote: > > > > One might question why *nix distributions insist on providing a known > > point of attack to begin with. Why does user 0 have to be called > > root? Why not beatlebailey, cinnamon or pasdecharge? > > That is more or less what OS X does. User 0 still exists, and it's > labelled as "root", but there is no way (unless the owner goes way out > of his way) to actually log in as root. The first account created is > given full sudo access, and can choose to grant sudo to subsequently > created users. (Users with sudo can still get a root shell, but that's > not the same as logging in as root.) > > I thought Ubuntu did this as well, but I haven't installed Ubuntu for > quite a while. Anyone know?Yes, I think they were one of the first ones to do it. I remember thinking at the time, ah, copying Apple. -- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6
On Wed, February 4, 2015 10:35 am, Scott Robbins wrote:> On Wed, Feb 04, 2015 at 08:18:23AM -0800, Keith Keller wrote: >> On 2015-02-04, James B. Byrne <byrnejb at harte-lyne.ca> wrote: >> > >> > One might question why *nix distributions insist on providing a known >> > point of attack to begin with. Why does user 0 have to be called >> > root? Why not beatlebailey, cinnamon or pasdecharge? >> >> That is more or less what OS X does. User 0 still exists, and it's >> labelled as "root", but there is no way (unless the owner goes way out >> of his way) to actually log in as root. The first account created is >> given full sudo access, and can choose to grant sudo to subsequently >> created users. (Users with sudo can still get a root shell, but that's >> not the same as logging in as root.) >> >> I thought Ubuntu did this as well, but I haven't installed Ubuntu for >> quite a while. Anyone know? > > Yes, I think they were one of the first ones to do it. I remember thinking > at the time, ah, copying Apple. >Note: Ubuntu was first released in 2004. As a matter of fact Ubuntu is one of the clones of Debian which was first released in 1993. Apple OS 10 (based on opendarwin) - the only one of Mac OSes "root - sudo" talk can be relevant to was first shipped on their machines later than 2002 as I recall (wikiedia is really vague on the date MacOS 10 was first shipped, I have to rely on my memory). So, I would say, Ubuntu wasn't copying Apple, they are just a clone of Debian. And Debian is older system than MacOS 10. I'm not a historian, so someone probably will correct me, if I'm wrong here. Just my $0.02 Valeri ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> On Feb 4, 2015, at 10:04 AM, Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote: > > wikiedia is really vague on the date MacOS 10 was first shippedIt depends on what you mean by ?shipped.? The first OS X product released into the market was OS X Server 1.0, in March 1999: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0 It was basically OPENSTEP with a Mac OS 8 like skin on top. It didn?t even include Finder, because the first usable version of the Carbon API wouldn?t be completed for another two years. About a year and a half later, in September 2000, Apple shipped the OS X Public Beta. This was the public?s first look at the new Quartz/Aqua interface. This wasn?t a ?beta? in the sense of ?This isn?t released yet.? You paid for the disc and Apple shipped it to you. It was more like ?We know this is still pretty broken, but we?ve ben promising a new OS since 1997, so if you want to see what we?ve been spending the last 4 years working on, we?ll sell you a copy cheap." Apple shipped Mac OS X 1.0 in March 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_10.0 So, there you have have it, a 2-year span during which OS X could be said to be commercially available. OS X 1.0 did include sudo. I don?t know if root was actually disabled by default at that point, though. I haven?t been able to find out if prior versions of the OS ? including OPENSTEP and NeXTSTEP ? also included it. I couldn?t even find old manual PDFs or even a man page archive.> So, I would say, Ubuntu wasn't copying Apple, > they are just a clone of Debian. And Debian is older system than MacOS 10.Nope. Though sudo has been in the Debian package repo since at least Debian 3 (2002), the base install has never included sudo. Debian?s sudo package didn?t install with a useful default configuration until Debian 7; you had to manually configure it in Debian 6 and earlier before you could actually use it. Needless to say, the root account is never disabled by default on Debian, as it is on OS X and Ubuntu. I?ve written up the full details of the non-universality of sudo here: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/48522/ Bottom line, Ubuntu *did* copy Apple in this respect, as they have so many times before. (Upstart, Unity, etc.)