On Sat, 2 Aug 2003, Chad N. Tindel wrote:
> > > <RANT>As a programmer, I personally would never write code that kept
> > > people from running things as root. I mean, what is the point?
> >
> > If someone roots your box, it's not our fault. Simple as that.
>
> I didn't say "require them to run as a non-root user". I said "Give them
> the choice to decide what is correct for their environment". In the case
> of apache, there are many internal webservers that are not exposed to the
> threat of the public internet; for such servers, it may be appropriate to run
> apache as root because it simplifies the administration and automation of
> tasks. But to do so, one has to know how to re-compile apache, which will
> exclude a lot of your basic garden variety administrators. Its very
> un-friendly programming.
So tell me, what does the sysadmin gain by running postgresql as root.
Seriously, what one advantage does he have? Besides allowing him to be
lazy, I can't think of one.