deleting password for a user

[Michael Beattie]

On 7/21/06, Christopher J. Bottaro <cjbottaro at alumni.cs.utexas.edu> wrote:
> Michael Beattie wrote:
>
> >> Nod, but I said in my first post "sudo passwd -d new_user" executes
> >> without
> >> error.  The problem is that it seems to have no effect, because when
> >> I 'su - new_user' it asks for a password.
> >>
> >> Oh well, it's not that important I guess since "sudo su - new_user" works
> >> fine...except I just broke sudo cuz I changed /etc/hostname and
> >> not /etc/hosts...haha!
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Just because it asks for a password doesnt mean that there are any
> > passwords that will work...
> >
> > Also, look into "passwd -l"
>
> I know, I think you are misunderstanding me.  I want to be able to 'su -'
> into an account without being asked for a password.  In Fedora, I
> accomplished this by removing the password for the account
> with 'passwd -d'.  In Kubuntu, 'passwd -d' executes without failure,
> but 'su -' on the account with no password asks for as password.  That is
> counter productive to my goal of logging into an account with su without
> providing a password.
>
> Peace.
>

You realize that by doing this, you will make it possible for anyone
to log into the account with no password, right?

I think a safer way of doing it would be to edit the sudoers file with
the NOPASSWD directive.  Put a line that lets your user run su with no
password.  Then you can

sudo su -

And it wont bother you.