what is root actually means?

[Earl Violet]

--- Greg Booth <bootgr at gmail.com> wrote:


> 
> I've been told to re-lock the root account you do sudo passwd -l
> root
> 
> here's what man has to say about passwd -l ( lower case L )
> 
> man passwd
>        -l, --lock
>           Lock the named account. This option disables an account
> by changing
>           the password to a value which matches no possible
> encrypted value.
> 
> so the account is actually locked, no way to log into it, BUT you
> can
> still become root using sudo -i and here's what man says about
> using
> sudo -i
> 
>        -i  The -i (simulate initial login) option runs the shell
> specified in
>            the passwd(5) entry of the user that the command is
> being run as.
>            The command name argument given to the shell begins with
> a - to
>            tell the shell to run as a login shell.  sudo attempts
> to change to
>            that users home directory before running the shell.  It
> also initializes
>            the environment, leaving TERM unchanged, setting HOME,
>            SHELL, USER, LOGNAME, and PATH, and unsetting all other
> environment
>            variables.  Note that because the shell to use is
> determined before
>            the sudoers file is parsed, a runas_default setting in
> sudoers will
>            specify the user to run the shell as but will not affect
> which
>            shell is actually run.
> 
> Greg

thank you Greg,

I have been following the sudo vs. root discussion for a while now. 
I originally enabled root and was just going to ask how to back out
of it.

Earl


URL http://deserthowler.cjb.net
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