[boomlinde]

There's nothing inherent about Linux which prevents you from running everything as uid 0. If you're fine with every process you run having the same full privileges and shared ownership of everything, you should.

Most machines, at least outside embedded devices, are not like this. They are multi-user systems even when there's only ever one breathing thing at the desk because it offers a degree of separation between the privileges of your daemons, your pid 1, your web browser etc.

[heurisko]

I think the point was that root shouldn’t be required for “common administrative tasks”. The nuclear option of running everything as root doesn’t address this.

[boomlinde]

What the single user is called is a technicality. The logical conclusion is the same: your login account has administrative privileges and processes run by that account have administrative privileges as a consequence.

The point I'm getting at isn't to promote the nuclear option, but suggest that maybe there's a good reason for e.g. a web browser or your word processor to not have the same privileges as a user who can execute "simple administrative tasks" like changing the TCP/IP stack through which all your network traffic passes.

[stingraycharles]

What are the common administrative tasks related to networking that require root for networking? All I can think about is stuff like route tables and dhcp, both of which live at the IP/Ethernet level rather than TCP.

[adrian_b]

Starting any network server process that uses ports under 1000, like most standard protocols (https, http, ssh, smtp, dns, ntp, dhcp etc.), requires root rights on any UNIX-like operating system.

Most personal computers do not need server processes (unless you want to connect remotely to them), but your question was not restricted to them.

[boomlinde]

From a practical point of view, regardless of the scope of the original question, this is the kind of scenario where you'd really want the restriction. More than a simple administrative task it's a dangerous attack vector to allow any user to launch your httpd or DNS.

That being said, check out capabilities(7) in Linux. You can grant an executable the privilege of binding to a low port when run by non-0 uid through setcap. This is a good compromise.

[convolvatron]

this whole 'privledged ports' nonsense is left over from a time where some process on another machine running on a low port was somehow to be trusted - because the person running that process was another administrator, and you can generally trust those guys (as opposed to unwashed users).

that world didn't last very long, and I wish we could vent some of these designs that didn't pass the test of time.

[toast0]

You can adjust the highest priviledged port (at least on FreeBSD). It's convenient to set that to 79 and let regular users listen to http without needing root to listen.

ssh and smtp generally need root to do their job, although maybe you could find a way to deliver mail to users without it. If you want to run user based dns or others, you could set the priviledged port even lower.