A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux® 8

System Administrator and Superuser

Much of what a system administrator does is work that ordinary users do not have permission to do. When doing one of these tasks the system administrator logs in as root (or uses another method; see the list starting on page 898) in order to have systemwide powers that are beyond those of ordinary users: A user with root privileges is referred to as Superuser. The login name is root by default and should not be changed. Although you can set up a GNU/Linux system with any name in place of root, it will break the system: Many programs depend on this name being root. Superuser has the following powers and more:

• Some commands, such as those that add new users, partition hard drives, and change system configuration, ...