[SunHELP] Permission denied as root

[Nicholas Dronen]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 12:02:53PM -0900, Matthew Schumacher wrote:
> Ok, I don't understand how this could be.  Isn't root like god?
> 
> # ls -al | grep var
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root     other        512 Nov  7 09:15 var
> 
> # rm -rf var
> rm: Unable to remove directory var: Permission denied
> 
> # /usr/ucb/whoami
> root

Root is indeed like God, but God has created a universe
in which even He obeys his rules.  When on the 8th day
God created NFS, he ordained that system administrators --
the tidy angels of the the budding computer universe --
have the power to prevent God from removing the files
they export to God's machine over the network.  Thus,
one of God's many names is uid -2.

Regards,

Nicholas Dronen