[plug] Linux security idea - maybe

[Craig Ringer]

> It's been an interesting thread and I've a better grasp on security
> possibilities as a result.  Hopefully others have benefited as well.  I
> have a machine to rebuild soon so I will try the alternative-root scheme.
> If I mess it up I can easily reload things and start afresh :-)

Remember, problems may not be immediately obvious. Sometimes there is 
breakage with daemons making the wrong assumptions, etc. Great caution 
required. I'm pretty sure the passwd file is implicity assumed by most 
apps to be one uid = one username, after all.

It may be possible to simply rename the root account, leaving the 
original "root" user either nonexistant or mapped to a high uid with no 
priveleges - but I haven't tried this yet. S'pose I should, really - 
whenever I discover something that breaks, I'd just need to submit a bug 
report and/or patch.

Too much else to do.

Craig Ringer