> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:firebird-support@yahoogroups.com] Im Auftrag von Mike Dewhirst
> Gesendet: Freitag, 15. April 2005 13:31
> An: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
> Betreff: Re: [firebird-support] permission denied
>
>
> the /root directory.
> It turns out that is the home directory for user root. I had
> been wondering what that ~ meant whenever I did cd /root.
>

If you want to know why root's home is /root but not /home/root:

Days ago, it was common to have the home-directory on another partition/harddisk, or even as a network share. For example, there was one "big" server which stored all user's home-directories, and every unix-box mounted this share as /home. Now every user had his files on every box available in his home-directory. But if the network fails, for example, no one could log into the box. This is why root has his own special directory, directly in the filesystem, so he could log in even if the home-directory is not available because the disk or the network failed.

Cheers, Alex