Sometimes
too much control can do more harm than good or why you really
don't need root.
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Root Access, Do I need it?
A lot of times people want hosting with access to root. But what
does “root access” mean? Root, or getting root,
is receiving the privledge to access all of the places on a
computer. If you think of a server/computer as a tree the roots
control the tree. The roots of a tree allow water in, minerals
in and are the lifeblood of the tree. Anything which goes into
the roots goes into the entire tree. Anything which affects
the roots of a tree affects the entire tree.
Servers
are set up with a similar thought process in that parts of
the server are broken down into different
areas. Each different
area has its own privledges. One area cannot affect another area.
For example, if there are three web sites on a server and one
web site breaks the other two will not be affected. Each web
site is in its own part of the server and can affect only itself.
However, there has to be a master account or way into each area
or site. If you don’t have a master method to access all
sites at once it would be a tremoundous amount of effort if something
needed to be fixed or updated on every site on the server. The
method or access to all of the parts of the server is “root
access.” When someone has root access they can affect everything
on the entire server or change everything on the entire server.
There are no restrictions with root access. If an error is made
in root access it could "wipe out the entire server."
So why do people want root access? Who knows.
But unless you are leasing your own server and need to affect
every account
on the server you don’t need root access. There are some
things you can do to make your site run more efficient with root
access, but unless you know what you are doing you could destroy
the entire server. And webhosting providers are not going to
allow that to happen because chances are there is more than one
client on the server. Besides that’s what the webhosting
company is being paid to do—manage the server where your
hosting account is. It’s not your job to manage the server,
just to manage your own web site.
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