Linux Administration Cookbook

Root access to directories and files

The god/super/almighty user (root) has pretty much carte blanche access to everything on the system, meaning that a common shortcut you might see people enacting is the following, should they get frustrated at their inability to read a file:

$ sudo cat examplefile

This would work, because root has that power, but it's a bad habit to get into using sudo for everything. Be selective with it, and think about what you're doing before you arbitrarily stick sudo in front of things because you're frustrated. (Mostly, this is a message to myself, because I'm just as guilty of this as anyone.)