Root password security

[Colin Pinkney]

On Wednesday 16 Jan 2008, O. Sinclair wrote:
> [snip] ...I generally do not like
> the idea of my computer being open to access by anyone who gets their
> hands on it. So I figured that if I booted into "rescue" (I hope we mean
> the same) mode and set a password I would be asked for that next time.

If someone has physical access to your PC any security like this is pointless 
as they could boot from a CD or USB stick, bypassing GRUB altogether and then 
have full access to your hard drive. Or they could pull the hard drive out of 
the PC and connect it to another PC as a secondary drive and access it all. 
About the only way to stop any of this completely is to encrypt your hard 
drive.

Anyway, the howto for what you want is here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=7353

-- 
Colin Pinkney
http://www.cpinkney.org.uk