On Sun, 29 Apr 2012, Jeff Jensen wrote: > What are they? # rm -rf * will just do it. % sudo rm -rf * will at least prompt you and give you a slight chance of noticing what you just did. Using sudo rather than a dedicated root prompt also means that your following commands are not running as root unless you sudo again. It also means you'll never forget a terminal logged in as root! > Are this thread's recommendations even for my home servers, or is this more > for the shared server environment, a la corporate? I would whole-heartedy recommend this for any and all UNIX machines. There's absolutely no reason to be logged in as root. Best example? It's how Mac OS X is set up. Yeah, there's OS X servers, but it's really one of the ultimate home environments. There's REALLY no reason to be logged in as root on a desktop. I'd almost recommend sudo even MORE on a home environemnt. Corporate servers are more likely to have professionals working on them who follow strict protocols. Also they're much more likely to have had a full backup made. -Yaron --