[TriLUG] root

[Reginald Reed]

Alan,

Thats a great question that I can only guess it (with *ix experience
going back to ~1987-1988) was based on the fact that root's home
directory was "/" or root.  Total guess on my part and I'm seriously
interested in other theories or info/links/lore on what is really is!

*nerd chuckle*

--Reggie

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 9:28 PM, Alan Porter <porter at trilug.org> wrote:
>
> The other day, I was explaining to my daughter that the administrative user
> or "super user" on a Linux system is usually named "root" [1].
>
> She asked me why.
>
> A little bit of googling turned up a lot of "super user is called root"
> statements, but very few "why" statements.  Some guessed that it was because
> root was the only user who had permission to write to the root directory in
> the filesystem.
>
> Does anyone in this group have any further insights into the term "root"?
>
>
> [1] Because after hearing that I had purchased an MSP430 "Chronos" watch
> development kit, Nivex made the smart-aleck response:
> $ ssh root at alanswatch
>
> --
> # ɹǝʇɹoԀ uɐl∀
>
>
>
>
>
>
> .
>
> --
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