What's the origin of root account? Where did it come from and why is it called root anyway?
(Originally asked by @lizztheblizz on Twitter.)
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What's the origin of root account? Where did it come from and why is it called root anyway?
(Originally asked by @lizztheblizz on Twitter.)
Best Answer
The original home directory of the root user was the root of the filesystem
/(http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V5/etc/passwd). I think the user was indeed named after that directory. But why 'root' and not 'start' or 'origin' or something else? Well, before Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie wrote UNIX, they were (also at Bell Labs) developing Multics. If you take a look at Multics history, you will find that ROOT existed there too (http://web.mit.edu/multics-history/source/Multics_Internet_Server/Multics_mdds.html). So the name must come from Multics.