Assigning ROOT a password

[Michael Leone]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 1:36 PM, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> Michael Leone wrote:
>
>  > On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca>
>  > wrote:
>  >
>  >>  >>  I administer a CentOS system that has a root account.  I don't know
>  >>  >>  the root password; since I've never had physical access to the
>  >>  >>  system, I probably couldn't ssh in as root anyway; and I've never
>  >>  >>  had any trouble administering it via sudo.
>  >>  >
>  >>  > Others do things differently. BTW, were you an employee of the company
>  >>  > who owned the CentOS system? Some places I know won't give the
>  >>  > password to consultants (preferring to use sudo, as you do - hey, that
>  >>  > rhymes! :-)),
>  >>
>  >>  It does?  I always assumed - despite the fact that the "do" in sudo
>  >>  probably really is "do", that sudo rhymes with pseudo (as in
>  >>  "pseudo-root" access).
>  >
>  > I've always heard it as "do" - as " su [sue] do", or "(s)witch (u)ser
>  > - do" the command.
>
>  I believe "su" originally meant "superuser",

Me, too, but since you can "su" to any user, I believe it's come to
mean "switch user".

>  but from the sudo website
>  http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/intro.html: "Sudo (su "do") allows a system
>  administrator..." certainly implies it should be pronounced "doo", but
>  it'll always be "pseudo" to me :-)

Whatever floats your boat. :-) As an unrelated sidenote, Windows also
has a built-in sudo command (called "runas"), that's been there since
Win2000, but not a "su" command (natively, anyway, altho you can
"runas" the administrator and start a new shell, and sorta get the
same effect).
.
>  --
>  derek
>
>
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-- 
Michael J. Leone
<mailto:turgon at mike-leone.com>

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