[ih] Ping Eduardo A. Suárez (was Re: What is the origin of the root account?)

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/12/2013 4:43 PM, Eduardo A. Suárez wrote:
> Hi Larry,
>
> thanks for all your contributions, it's nice to read old stories.
>
> I was reviewing a large number of documents on the origins of Unix, and
> the different versions that I found on this site
> http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ and the only manual that
> calls the super user "root" is SunOS 1.1 manual from 1984. Since SunOS
> it's based on 4.1BSD and the manual of that version and the latter
> (4.3BSD, etc.) does not refer to a "root" account, I could imagine that
> "root" is the brainchild of Sun.
>
> But it's just my intuition because I have no internal document from Sun
> to support this assumption.

That is really interesting.  I did not discover the unix world until the 
late 1980's but I thought the name "root" was ubiquitous.  (I don't 
remember ever seeing the subject in writing, but it just now occurs to 
me that on the systems I know anything about, the default prompt is the 
user's "home" directory which often named after the account name--and 
the "home" directory for the superuser is "/" -- "root".)


-- 
Requiescas in pace o email           Two identifying characteristics
                                         of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio      Infallibility, and the ability to
                                         learn from their mistakes.
                                           (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)