Why is root so much faster?

[ethernet76]

Recently I've been having some speed issues with VPC 6. What was suppose to be an emulated Pentium 2 ended up being a 386.

I logged out. Logged in as root, and everything was faster. Virtual PC runs faster than I've ever seen it, about as fast as my P3.

I've thought about the possibility of this just being an unclogged user account, not weighed down by all the installs and everything else, but I don't think it'd account for the general speed increase i've seen across all applications.

Anyone have thoughts as to why?

(I know logging in as root is a bad idea, however I do not make a habit of it, and do not plan on making it my regular login.)

 

[bousozoku]

It's a supremely bad idea to run user applications as root.

Create another account that doesn't have all of your changes that your regular administrator account does and use that instead.

You've installed various things, changed preferences, etc. that cause the system to slow down.

 

[ethernet76]

It's a supremely bad idea to run user applications as root.

Create another account that doesn't have all of your changes that your regular administrator account does and use that instead.

You've installed various things, changed preferences, etc. that cause the system to slow down.

I tried that, but it's still not as fast.

And yes, I know it's a horrible horrible horrible idea to run user programs as root. However, my level of caring is about 0. 10.3.4 made everything slower. From log in to launching applications. I'm going to do a format soon anyway.

 

[ChrisH3677]

In the Windows world, (in our role of system admins) we're always logging in with full access. Why is it so bad to do this in Unix/OSX?

 

[MisterMe]

In the Windows world, (in our role of system admins) we're always logging in with full access. Why is it so bad to do this in Unix/OSX?

It is a very bad practice in the Wintel world. Unfortunately, you don't have a lot of choice because so many third party software and peripheral vendors require full access for installation and even operation in some cases. Using the root account is not going to kill your dog or get your sister pregnant, but it is a major end run around the excellent security afforded by UNIX. If you have a system glitch while logged-in as root, you can suffer major system damage. Sure, you can wipe the harddisk and reinstall the OS, but why bother?

 

[ChrisH3677]

Does OSX let you assign subsets of root permissions to users? eg permission to access all users' folders?

ps as one who uninstalled VPC coz it was too slow, i am most interested in finding out why ethernet76's VPC runs so much faster in root.

 

[bousozoku]

I tried that, but it's still not as fast.

And yes, I know it's a horrible horrible horrible idea to run user programs as root. However, my level of caring is about 0. 10.3.4 made everything slower. From log in to launching applications. I'm going to do a format soon anyway.

It's your machine. I take no responsibility for it.

I've not noticed how 10.3.4 has made anything slower. Perhaps, you have fewer than 512 MB of RAM? Do you use customisations/hacks?

ChrisH3677:

It's even a bad idea to log in as Administrator in the Windows world but then, there are many faux pas that happen anyway.

As far as users and their folders go, you can create various groups to allow various access to folders. However, backup and restore usually happen by access to root, even if it's not someone directly signed on as root.

 

[osprey76]

Try cleaning house on your system. Get Cocktail, run the cron scripts, and clean out all of the caches. It fixed a weird Finder problem I was having and the whole machine feels snappier.

 

[aussie_geek]

Cocktail messes with your permissions

Try cleaning house on your system. Get Cocktail, run the cron scripts, and clean out all of the caches. It fixed a weird Finder problem I was having and the whole machine feels snappier.

Cocktail is a great little utility but one thing that I have noticed is that heaps of your disk permissions are changed. I would suggest that you run a permission repair after running it.

aussie_geek

 

[NusuniAdmin]

I have a thread open about this

I have a thread open explaining how to make os x faster. It is not the root, it is probably because on ur regular account you have more menu bar extra's load (which really increases log in time) and more icons in dock and less files on finder. All of these are major factors in the log in and performance on os x. I am not sure about root but on my recent becnmarks with a brand new admin vs a brand new regular user it shows regular users are faster than admin, which makes sense.

 

[ChrisH3677]

It's even a bad idea to log in as Administrator in the Windows world but then, there are many faux pas that happen anyway.

You couldn't get anything done in Windows systems if you didn't login as an admin user!! The "Run as" option was a useful addition tho.

Did you know tho, that Spell Checker in Word 2K doesn't work if the user is not an admin on the local machine?!!!! We have to give all our users local admin access for that and some other stupid progs that require at least Power User access.

 

[slooksterPSV]

You couldn't get anything done in Windows systems if you didn't login as an admin user!! The "Run as" option was a useful addition tho.

Did you know tho, that Spell Checker in Word 2K doesn't work if the user is not an admin on the local machine?!!!! We have to give all our users local admin access for that and some other stupid progs that require at least Power User access.

In XP as long as your account isn't limited you can do anything the administrator can do. The only time you would log into adminitstrator is well never. You can do anything with just a regular unlimited user. If the virtual pc 6 windows emulated machine is slow try running msconfig in the run box, disable some items in the last tab - Startup - and unload somethings. Restart the emulated windows and it'll go faster. With your Mac, just repair permissions to get everything going better again. Try unloading start up programs on your user account.

 

[bousozoku]

You couldn't get anything done in Windows systems if you didn't login as an admin user!! The "Run as" option was a useful addition tho.

Did you know tho, that Spell Checker in Word 2K doesn't work if the user is not an admin on the local machine?!!!! We have to give all our users local admin access for that and some other stupid progs that require at least Power User access.

Interesting. I've been on both sides of the adminstrator fence and have found mostly that I wouldn't have to be Administrator to get things done--especially not to do a spell check in MS Office.

 

[stcanard]

Interesting. I've been on both sides of the adminstrator fence and have found mostly that I wouldn't have to be Administrator to get things done--especially not to do a spell check in MS Office.

It depends on the version of Word. Word XP is (hopefully) fixed. I don't know about Word 2K. I can tell you definitely with Word 98 that in order to even run in on Windows 2000/NT you had to do one of two things:

1) Give the user Admin (or power user) access -or-
2) Give the user write access to the winnt and system32 directories.

Since I have never found a description of exactly what a power user is granted for permissions, I have taken to considering it equivalent to admin -- if I can't find the answer I have to assume the worst.

 

[stcanard]

Does OSX let you assign subsets of root permissions to users? eg permission to access all users' folders?

ps as one who uninstalled VPC coz it was too slow, i am most interested in finding out why ethernet76's VPC runs so much faster in root.

There are a couple of ways to do that. The first and easiest is if you also ahve an administrator account. Whenever you try to access a file that your account is denied, OSX asks if you want to authenticate, and lets you type in the admin account / password, and give you temporary access to the files.

The second, if you don't mind using terminal is to use the sudoers file. You can use that file to give accounts root access to specific programs (i.e. if they are supposed to be able to shutdown the computer but nothing else, sudoers can give an account special permission to run shutdown as root).

The third, is to use groups to fine tune permissions. For instance, eclipse requires users that use it have write permission into some directories in it's hierarchy. So I can create a group "developers", change those dirs to be belong to the developers group, and give it group write permission. Now to let people use it, all I have to do is add them to the developers group. (Side note, if I make eclipse itself developers owned, I can deny people access to the dev tools by simply not adding them to the group).

So yes, you can do whatever fine tuning you want, it just takes a bit of work.

 

[bousozoku]

It depends on the version of Word. Word XP is (hopefully) fixed. I don't know about Word 2K. I can tell you definitely with Word 98 that in order to even run in on Windows 2000/NT you had to do one of two things:

1) Give the user Admin (or power user) access -or-
2) Give the user write access to the winnt and system32 directories.

Since I have never found a description of exactly what a power user is granted for permissions, I have taken to considering it equivalent to admin -- if I can't find the answer I have to assume the worst.

That's even more interesting. I was setting up machines with Word 97 (Word 98 doesn't run on Windows ) on Win95 and WinNT and using it on both without fail. I did not give the average user administrator rights to anything on WinNT because we had an office full of abusers.

Also, I was using Word 2000 on Win2000 and WinXP as a user and didn't have a problem and they definitely didn't give me any special access.

 

[stcanard]

That's even more interesting. I was setting up machines with Word 97 (Word 98 doesn't run on Windows ) on Win95 and WinNT and using it on both without fail. I did not give the average user administrator rights to anything on WinNT because we had an office full of abusers.

Well, there's two possibilities then. One is that maybe by default users have write access to those directories (I have no idea, it's been too long since I've set up an NT/2K system).

The second, which I really, really hope is true, is maybe MS fixed that in a patch.

I don't know the current situation, but 2 years ago it was impossible to run a 2k system without admin access of some sort. Word, Palm Desktop (yup, not hotsync; desktop), and my HP scanner all required admin to be able to work. It was a nightmare.

If they've fixed that, it can only mean good for the state of zombie computers around the world in the future.

To get back on topic I saw a scary statistic yesterday that someone somewhere is claiming that 80% of spam is being sent through zombies right now. So don't run root even if you think it's faster!