Re: Filenames in Ada

[Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net>]

Dave Thompson wrote:

> On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 07:59:45 +0100, Martin Krischik
> <krischik@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> <snip>
>> Well, Windows is full of Hacks as well. An so is Unix. Just yesterday I
>> read that the "Uni" in Unix stands for "single user". Originally Unix was
>> a scaled down single user alternative to "Multrix". Well that explains a
>> lot.
> 
> Multics, the Multiplexed Information and Computing Service. See
> www.multicians.org for (much!) more. Not single user -- even the very
> first, internal Bell Labs systems had multiple concurrent users -- but
> small numbers of users: then perhaps 2-10 on a minicomputer, today
> typically 10s to 100s (real users e.g. shell not say HTTP requesters,
> which could be hugely more), compared to the big-iron mainframe
> timesharing systems of the day which were 100s to many 1000s.
> 
>> Indeed there is only one real user on Unix - the user with the ID 0.
>> 
> What do you mean "real"? There is only one superuser id, or
> equivalently all system/manager privileges/roles are combined into one
> userid, which is certainly a limitation that is sometimes a problem.
> But Unix does (or perhaps Unices do, since there are now a range of
> them) support multiple "ordinary" users pretty well. If competently
> administered, which many personal (Linux etc.) systems aren't.

big-iron machines normally need more then one superuser - sometimes some of
them might want a holiday. May be not every superuser need all the
superpowers.

I permanently have a root console open on my system and when I use a Linux
system where I don't have the root password I feel like a cripple.

I don't feel that way on VMS - there is a SET PRIVILEGE command there.

Martin 
-- 
mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net
Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com