From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: arnold@skeeve.com (arnold@skeeve.com)
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2015 05:14:53 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Why root user name?
In-Reply-To: <20150916195039.GA27635@www.oztivo.net>
References: <20150916195039.GA27635@www.oztivo.net>
Message-ID: <201509171114.t8HBErU4027961@freefriends.org>

Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:

> As I was dropping off to sleep last night, I wondered why the superuser
> account on Unix is called root.
>
> There's a hierarchy of directories and files beginning at the tree root /.
> There's a hierarchy of processes rooted with init. But there's no hierarchy
> of users, so why the moniker "root"?
>
> Any ideas?

>From BWK:

> Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2015 05:35:30 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Brian Kernighan <bwk at CS.Princeton.EDU>
> To: arnold at skeeve.com
> Subject: Re: why the name "root" for userid 0?
>
> I will speculate, without knowledge, that it's because the
> super user can access the files in the root directory.
>
> Ken would know, though perhaps not answer...
>
> Brian

Maybe some of the former BTLers could ask him? :-)

Thans,

Arnold