Creating Super User

[Kevin Buettner]

On Mar 7,  2:12pm, Brian Cluff wrote:

> Yeah, it would be totally safe.  The only thing that makes root root is that
> used ID of 0.  Since you will still have a user with ID 0 you will still
> have a root account, just not with the name root.
> Just double check that you did indeed give root privlemges to the new user
> or you could hose up your system pretty good.

I don't agree with the assessment that it would be totally safe to
delete root after creating a new superuser.  What about those cron
jobs that want to run as root and use the name ``root'' to do so? 
What about all of those entries in inetd.conf that say ``root'' in
order to run as root?  What about compiled programs which call
getpwnam("root") in order to get root's password entry?

That said, I haven't tried it.  It could work, at least for a while,
but I have a feeling that a lot of other things would need to be
changed too.

Kevin