Re: changing root account name

From: Seth Arnold (sarnold@wirex.com)
Date: 11/01/01 

Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 12:13:19 -0800
From: Seth Arnold <sarnold@wirex.com>
To: focus-linux@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: changing root account name
Message-ID: <20011101121319.L1108@wirex.com>

On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 02:07:13PM -0500, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> > In fact correct me if I'm wrong, but lots of Unices simply expect the
> > superuser account to be the first line in the passwd file? I seem
> > to remember reasing something about it years ago?
>
> None, that I'm aware of and I go back to the AT&T release 3 days.
> The password file is totally order independent.

Not entirely; iirc, if one has two accounts named 'root' listed in the
/etc/passwd file, some Unix systems would get the first, and others
would be officially non-deterministic, though one may be able to figure
out the order used.

In the specific case of "first entry is root", well, I've never heard
that one anywhere else, but that doesn't mean it isn't true somewhere. :)

Cheers! :) 

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