David Walker wrote:

>Does anyone know of a very easy guide to what setting passwords is all
>about.
>I read somewhere that when I first login I should type 'root' to gain access
>to everything but everytime I boot I get the recommendation to create a
>single user account. Wondering why and how.

Ah, UNIX gives you this thing called security as opposed to the "free for all"
syndrome that other OS's like Microsoft DOS and nearly all of their windoze based
OS products has.  A good book on an introduction to UNIX would be useful here.  NetBSD
is trying to let you know that it would be wise to create a special account for yourself
that you can use for normal system use such as text processing, playing games, web
browsing, e-mail, spreadsheets, multimedia, and the like... (non system administrative
work).  When we are logged in as root, we are able to compromise the integrity of the
system because we have control over everything like the ability to format the hard drive
and other nasty things that could take the system down.  A UNIX type system such as
NetBSD, FreeBSD, SCO, HP-UX, and others are stable enough to be left up and running
24-hours a day for months and months on end without rebooting or shutting down so once
the system has been set up and configured you should only have to log in as root
occasionally to read mail that the cpu sends to you or do backups, upgrades, create or
delete accounts, change permissions on files and directories, mount a zip disk or cdrom
(system related things).  For example I have a personal account set up as "mike" in a
directory called mike (/home/mike) that I keep all of my personal stuff and records in.
That way, I won't accidentally wipe out anything related to the system because I am
logged in at a LOWER user level than root. My daughters have their own special accounts
like /home/hannah and /home/lydia that they can log into with their own user names and
passwords.  ;^)   A good thing to do is to browse the manual pages by typing at the
prompt (#).  These are just a few of the many commands useful for setting up user
accounts:

# man su       (Explains the "su" command).
   or
# man passwd   (Explains hos to change a pasword).
   or
# man useradd  (Explains how to create a user account)

# man userdel  (Explains how to delete a user account).

# man group

The first developers of UNIX at Bell Labs had the foresight to know that without these
security features, the integrity of the telephone central office switching computers
all running UNIX (sorry Bill) would otherwise be compromised by un-trustworthy telco
company employees.


I hope this helps.

--Video Mike--