tlug: Question

[NIIBE Yutaka <gniibe@example.com>]

Alan B. Stone writes:
 > This may sound like a stupid question, but one of my co-workers asked me
 > today as I was setting up a system with RedHat, why RedHat (and others)
 > have a "root" directory, while systems like Solaris do not?

I don't think this is stupid question. :-)  It's good question for
administration of Unix.

I guess that the reason is many Linux users (from DOS?) don't make
his/her own account but use "root" account (forever :-).

Here is rationale from http://www.pathname.com/fhs/2.0/fhs-3.9.html:
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Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

3.9 /root : Home directory for the root user (optional)

/ is traditionally the home directory of the root account on UNIX
systems. /root is used on many Linux systems and on some UNIX systems (in
order to reduce clutter in the / directory). The root account's home directory
may be determined by developer or local preference. Obvious possibilities
include /, /root, and /home/root.

If the home directory of the root account is not stored on the root partition
it will be necessary to make certain it will default to / if it can not be
located.

Note: we recommend against using the root account for mundane things such as
mail and news, and that it be used solely for system administration. For this
reason, we recommend that subdirectories such as Mail and News not appear in
the root account's home directory, and that mail for administration roles such
as root, postmaster and webmaster be forwarded to an appropriate user.
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