theoretical question - can root's username be changed?
John Summerfied
debian at herakles.homelinux.org
Fri Dec 2 04:46:45 UTC 2005
Jeff Vian wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 21:15 -0500, Claude Jones wrote:
>
>>Subject line says it all...
>
> of course, (in practice if not in fact)
>
> root is actually a username in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow.
> That user can be given any name you choose, but be very careful. Other
> programs depend on the username of root. /etc/aliases is an example
> where NOT having the username root would break things for mail.
Actually, alias shouldn't be a problem. One should always redirect
root's mail to some admin type who reads it oneself.
>
> You can easily give some other user the root privileges ( UID=0, GID=0 )
> and use that account instead of root for the same authority. (Note that
> this applies to the standard Linux authentication and may not apply in
> the same way to SELinux.)
I'm sure selinux won't care, but many scripts are likely to. Do a little
grepping to see what might care, or simply do it.
You can always boot from CD to recover.
--
Cheers
John
-- spambait
1aaaaaaa at computerdatasafe.com.au Z1aaaaaaa at computerdatasafe.com.au
Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/
do not reply off-list
More information about the fedora-list
mailing list