HP-UX Reference (11i v2 04/09) - 5 Miscellaneous Topics (vol 9)

privileges(5) privileges(5)

NAME

privileges - description of privileged user

DESCRIPTION

The UNIX operating system has traditionally used an "all or nothing" privilege model, where superusers

(those with effective

UID 0

, such as the root user) have virtually unlimited power, and other users have

few or no special privileges.

System administrators often need to delegate limited powers to other users. HP-UX provides several

ways to do this, including restricted sam(1M), the privilege groups described in privgrp (4), the

shutdown.allow

ﬁle described in shutdown (1M), and the cron.allow ﬁle described in crontab (1).

Because these mechanisms permit users other than superusers to perform certain privileged operations,

HP-UX documentation often uses terms such as "privileged user" or "user who has appropriate privileges"

instead of "superuser" or "root user" when describing who is permitted to perform an operation.

In the absence of a more speciﬁc description of the privileges necessary to perform an operation, you can

generally assume that superusers are suitably privileged.

WARNINGS

Product documentation, as discussed above, describes alternate ways that programs or users can obtain

sufﬁcient privileges to perform restricted operations. These alternate ways may be extended in future

product revisions.