General :: Is There Any Known Harm In Logging In As Root?
Mar 25, 2010
I am pondering on what would be any implications in logging in via SSH as root?Surely SSH is safe or am I kidding myself and falling for the unwary ethic of logging into a remote Linux box as root?I discovered some open ports remotely on the linux box, and decided to login as root to edit a configuration file to shut off the ports, hence my questioning in whether logging in as root...another point, since SSH is 'supposedly secure', there should not be any implications or am I kidding myself!??? Would it be better to login as normal user then su from there?
Ok, to make things even more interesting, what if its a bog standard generic linux distribution with no suid programs etc, then what happens...take that out of the picture, and say, for editing a configuration file...hackers are not going to see that are they, otherwise by the sound of the answers, it is putting an impression that hackers can see the traffic the minute you login as root?! Otherwise why bother using SSH? I mean, surely, SSH was designed to replace telnet and thereby increase protection...as we all know back in the early 90's before the internet became publicly available, that there was indeed sysadmins dialing in to private networks or telnet'ting into a remote system as root....
i just installed linux mandriva 2009. i set password for root and created a user account. when i try to login as root, after logging out as user, it does not allow me and gives the error "root logins are not allowed". even it does not show the root account. if i try to go to root from konsole terminal using su root, it allows to enter as a root but when i try to start the GUI with startx it gives error.not sure what to do and why i can't see my account in GUI mode
I was trying to edit a file requiring root permissions, so I used sudo. I typed the root password and it failed. This happened three times, and the process was ended. I then logged in as root (su) and was able to navigate to the file and make changes as root. Am I missing something? How would I edit the sudoers file such that this password would work? Or is there another way to log in to the sudo group to make these changes? How do I set sudo passwords?
I have created a linux machine and installed some softwares on it with root user privileges . I used to login with root user credentials for doing the various task.
Later i have realise that this is not the best practice to follow and there should be a new user with less privileges to be created for doing the day to day task.
I have read the steps to create the user but will that new user sufficient enough to do the task that i m doing it through root user? Will my software allow the new user to work on them? I would be glad if someone points me to a guidelines on what should be my next step?
I have a netbook running opensuse 11.2 I'm trying to make it run faster by disabling services, and I would like to kill off postfix as I don't ever use it (As far as i actually know) What harm could come from disabling postfix, if any?
I run ProFTPd with TLS authentication on my Debian Lenny server. My problem is that despite of the fact that my users connect chrooted, one of my friends had root privileges after logging in form a Macintosh and could browse the root directory, too.
What are the differences between "su -" in a GUI terminal and directly logging in as root in a text mode terminal (tty1-tty6)? Any environment, path or other functionality differences?
I have Windows 7 working on my laptop. I have 20GB space unpartitioned. I want to install a flavor of Linux like Fedora or Ubuntu in that space, but I have heard that keeping a dual OS configuration sometimes results in losing data stored on the hard disk. I've also heard that it may sometimes cause unrecoverable problem because when Linux is loaded on hard disk it will take over the boot loader from Windows.
Is this correct? Moreover, I have 6 partitions in Windows, but if I use a Live CD for Ubuntu or Fedora to boot, then it is not showing some partitions -- sometimes it shows only 4 or 5 partitions. What might be the problem, and how to resolve it without formatting the whole hard disk and repartitioning it?
I tried to create a user on Solaris 10 but when I try to login the user with "su -" I get the error message "no directory". When I try to login with "su" I get the error message "no shell".
I tried the useradd several combinations e.g.
All the tries i made didn't work. I also checked the permissions on /etc, /bin, /sbin and / and it seems ok so that the newly created user can access them.
i just finish setting up my new file server with two hardisk(80gig for first hd for my filesystem and 2nd 250 gig for my data files) now iam wondering can i umount my second drive "live" and replace a new hardisk without shutingdown my computer? can i damage my hardisk? i know there is a hotswapble hardisk. but i my case i cant not afford a upgrade in my unit(clone pc only) but guy i try several time to change live hardisk without turning off my pc? i just umount the 2nd disk and insert a new disk and nothing happend wrong in my system?
I installed Ubuntu Studio 9.0.4., as a VMWare virtual machine in OSX to check it out. I specified a password to 'root', did not add any other users. (I run the whole show as "admin" in OSX and Windows as well. If some kid wants my files - The mp3's are under "Music".)
Anyhow, the Ubuntu Studio install went through, the nifty login splash screen came up. I tried to login in a "root" with my password, and got the following thing into my face:
"The system administrator is not allowed to login from this screen"
OK, so what "other" login screen does Ubuntu have, then?
I am using Lucid lynx, 1 partition, Linux is the only OS, and I am the only user. Everything is working fine until I click on "Places> File Browser" the system ask for root password.
Then I enter the Root password and I can then go where ever I want. ( It does not do this every time, just most of the time.)
When I open File Browser the first things listed in the left pane are ROOT, DESKTOP, (which is the root desktop), then FILE SYSTEMS, etc.
I think all the little differences I am experiencing are a result of logging on as ROOT user. I think that when I open File Browser (I use this a lot) and it ask for the ROOT password I am then ROOT and remain ROOT until I log off (I never do, because I am the only user). When I am root, things will look and feel different than when I am logged on as Wayne, but there are some things that I cannot do as Wayne (such as open File Browser). I opened K3b to burn a disk and a window poped up saying "it is not wise to run K3b as root..."
I don't like about it is the fixation of avoiding root login. I read in the sticky post at the top of this forum that logging into a GUI interface as root is nearly always a bad idea. Why is this? If I have access to the root password, and can simply sudo commands as root, what is the functional difference? The only difference I can see is that I have to continually type in my root password for pretty much everything I do. Elevating a user to root status seems to require a call to the almighty.
I'm usually the only one with access to this system, and I generally like to add in user accounts for any other people that will use the system, and leave root for myself. What is the benefit of requiring 'sudo' all the time?
i have fedora 7 server running just zimbra email server. but i forgot the password.
i used a livecd ubuntu then i went to /etc/shadow i used gedit and i remove the hash between the ": :" then saved file. i reboot but i still can not logging. and it does a weird thing. i wrote root then the i hit enter when ask for the password i hit enter. then the screen clean up by it self then it ask for logging again. It does nt say that the password is wrong or any other error.
also i went to single-user mode then once i m at # i wrote passwd root then new password then i reboot but i still have the same problem. i cant logging.
I have RHEL4 server. my root is able to login from CUI mode but not able to login from GUI mode. normal user is able to login from GUI mode and we go to root through su command but directly root is not able to login from GUI
Feb 10 (today) user qt4 extracts from cd /var/log/secure grep -i 'feb 10' secure Something wrong with pam or selinux? I have not fooled with pam or selinux in decades The secure file seems to report problems I do regular yum update s from secure: above
secure:Feb 10 08:00:20 localhost pam: gdm-password[2396]: pam_unix(gdm-passwordession): session opened for user qt4 by (uid=0) secure:Feb 10 08:00:48 localhost polkitd(authority=local): Unregistered Authentication Agent for unix-session:/org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Session1 (system bus name :1.37, object path /org/gnome/PolicyKit1/AuthenticationAgent, locale en_US.UTF-8) (disconnected from bus)
[code]....
I can login to qt4 from another user via "su - qt4" I would be shot if I inserted the inserted secure file
I've enabled the root account on Ubuntu 9.10, however I want to stop it from being used to login via GDM. 9.10 seems to have a different GDM version, how can I carry this out under 9.10
I need to login as root, or at least get root privileges, in a cron triggered backup run. The straight way to do this would be the backup server making an ssh connection to the server to be backed up (this way because I want to avoid many servers being backed up in parallel and the backup server itself would be managing this diversity), via the rsync command which would be performing the backup's synchronization step.
I'm looking for alternatives to this in some form. I'd like to disallow direct root login to my ssh port (not 22One idea I have is to have the backup server initiate an ssh login as a non-root user, to either the actual source server, or to a server that can reach the source server ... and set up port forwarding. Over the forwarded port, then initiate the rsync that logs in as root via another port that allows direct root, but cannot be reached from the internet at all (because the border firewall doesn't include this port as allowed in).FYI, these logins will be using ssh keys, not passwords. I do need to keep ownership metadata for files being backed up, so this is why I am using root. Also, rsync is needed to get the incremental updates to keep bandwidth usage lower (otherwise I could just transfer a tarball each day).Anyone have any other ideas or comments, for security issues, based on experience doing things like this (backups, routine data replication, etc)?
I wanted to disable root logins in console, so I searched for that. I found that if I change root's bash to "/sbin/nologin" in "/etc/passwd", root user will not be able to login. So I did that. But when I wanted to use sudo command, it didn't show me root bash, but it only do the same thing as logging in as root in single user mode (shows message that this account is disabled). So, how I can disable root logins, but keep enabled sudo command for standard users?
I have installed fedora 14 in my computer. I installed some applications from root. I created a user id. I am unable to install my internet (broadband connection) now. every time it shows the error "Authentication failure" "install from root" something like that. How can I switch between user and root. Or how can I login as root again?
Everyone is wondering why we can't run gEdit and other tools from a terminal by logging in as root(e.g"su-"), I understand that by making changes they are trying to force us as users of Linux to learn better habits that are more secure, but the issues are driving people nuts!
I for one really like being able to log as root and open gEdit to make drive changes without having to login as root, I would normally still have access to all my things like email etc. So changing Linux to force everyone to not use tools like gEdit as root is becoming more of an inconvenience than they realize, there must be a safe way to do this!
My install of 11.4 has been running perfectly for for several weeks now. But- (always a but) today it started acting up. I cannot log in to any user account including Root after logging out. After a cold boot I can log in again anywhere but after logging out I have to reboot again then I can get back in to any account once. After logging out any attempted log in causes the splash screen to blank for a few seconds and then it comes back with the previous successful user name log in but typing in the password blanks the screen a few seconds again. Clicking on a user account also blanks the screen a few seconds and then it again comes back with the previous log in users name.
I've been installing proftpd on a server running fedora 8. It is setup in standalone server type, and I checked that the process is running and listening to port 21. When I try to login using a ftp client in Normal mode with root user & password , I receive first a 220, then a 530 login incorrect error. Can you help me?
I've been pasting my proftpd.conf configuration file below
I just tried ubuntu 9.10 in recovery mode i came to know that i can change root passwd without knowing the password then i can change password of every user by logging in as root
I am afraid to ask with so many things changing around in each new release.Where would one add a custom script to execute when logging and shutting down in into a user profile like /home/test or /root ?would this be rc.local?
I've installed OpenSUSE on my server and want to set ssh to log every command, which is send to system over it.
I've found this in my sshd_config:
I guess that both of those directives has to be uncommented, but I'd like to log every command, not only authorization (login/logout via SSH). I just want to know, if someone breaks into my system, what did he do.
