root access

[Cathy Arora]

I am new to unix and I hope that have not made a big mess for myself.
I am in root group (group 0) but cannot start sam or do any activity that gives access to root.
I donot even know where to start.
one thing I would like to check is mail. If something critical happens where do you check mail if someone contacted you...directory etc.
i was not on the system for past month and it is possible that someone contacted me and I ma not aware of it.
any ideas or clues will be appreciated

[Ron Kinner]

Cathy,

You posted in the microsoft group where they don't speak UNIX. They will probably move this to the HPUX group where it belongs.

However, to check your mail all you have to do is type
mail
or
mailx
that should show you what mail you have but usually when you log on if you have mail it will tell you. ? will give you the commands that you use. If you have a mail box in your home directory (mbox) you can read mail in it by
mail -f mbox
or mailx -f mbox

Ron

[Jon Finley]

One other addition to Ron's guidance, is that you may be in the "root" group, but you are still not root.... unless... your UID is 0, or you 'su' to root, providing the root password.

Most UNIX shops won't like you having a UID of 0 (big security hole), but if you are responcible for administrating a server, you'll probably be given a password to use with 'su', or.... another option is 'sudo' where you are given a subset of root privledges that can be added to/subtracted from.

Jon