>Sysadmins holding faciest power over their users??! Last time I checked,
>that was in the job description, to take care of the system(s)! And that
>definately includes keeping the root passwd and account as private as
>possible...anyway..

I don't think netbsd-help is the right place to wax philosophic .... but
since it's come up ...

Having once been a system administrator, but not one any longer, I think I
understand both sides of the fence equally well.

As a system administrator, I can remember numerous occasions when a person
who had root and thought they were doing the right thing managed to royally
screw things up and cause massive downtime.

Was this person evil?  Were they incompetent?  No to both.  They were
intelligent, were fairly knowledgable about Unix ... but lacked the necessary
experience that an experienced system administrator had.  In this case,
a little bit of knowledge was a dangerous thing indeed.

Not being a system administrator at my current job has it's frustrating
points.  Many times I have disagreed with the way the system has been
configured, or wished I had root to fix a simple problem (because I _know_
how to fix it! ... or at least I think I do :-) ).  But I think in the
long run, having a consistantly administrated system ends up saving the
users more time in the long run, as opposed to one that never reboots
correctly because too many "smart" people added stuff to rc.local that
they never had a chance to test correctly.

This only works if you have a decent system administrator, though.  But
as corny as it sounds, there is some truth to the old phrase, "To understand
is to forgive all".

--Ken