• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
programming forums Java Mobile Certification Databases Caching Books Engineering Micro Controllers OS Languages Paradigms IDEs Build Tools Frameworks Application Servers Open Source This Site Careers Other Pie Elite all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
Marshals:
  • Campbell Ritchie
  • Jeanne Boyarsky
  • Ron McLeod
  • Paul Clapham
  • Liutauras Vilda
Sheriffs:
  • paul wheaton
  • Rob Spoor
  • Devaka Cooray
Saloon Keepers:
  • Stephan van Hulst
  • Tim Holloway
  • Carey Brown
  • Frits Walraven
  • Tim Moores
Bartenders:
  • Mikalai Zaikin

A System Admin having a user name other than root

 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 70
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Hi,

Is the user name "root" constant? I mean can we change the user name for the root user ( having user id 0) to something else and it can still have the root privilage?

Similarly is it possible to add a new user and give the user all the privilages the root has?


Thanks in advance for your help/suggestions.
Basu.
 
author and iconoclast
Posts: 24207
46
Mac OS X Eclipse IDE Chrome
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
You actually can have multiple accounts with the same userid. What some people will do is have a root account with a password known to only one person, and then create other id-0 accounts (sometimes called "Z accounts") for assistant admins. The nice thing about this is that you can delete one of these accounts, therefore cutting off access to someone (of course, this only works if everybody's friendly, because while they had access, they might have put in a trapdoor.)

But it's better to manage privileges with finer control. You can use the "sudo" facility to give individual accounts the ability to run any desired range of commands as root. You can do this using groups; traditionally a group named "wheel" is given the ability to run any command as root.

Try "man sudoers" (or "man sudo", if that fails) to learn more.
 
Don't get me started about those stupid light bulbs.
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic