Am I glad vger has at last woken up...
>> how would a Linux system react if I changed "root" to something
>> else (preferably "bofh" :), but kept the UID/GID the same?
>> I.e. do all the tools and right mechanisms rely on UID/GID or on
>> the /etc/passwd|shadow user NAME?
>> I don't want to lock myself out ... =;)
I've not seen the original of this, so...
> Well, I know one person (at least) on this list who has "root" as a
> normal user account (UID != 0), so I presume he uses something else
> for his superuser account. He said he did this because
> "root@somedomain" addresses are ignored by some address harvesting
> software, and also to screw with the minds of anyone trying to
> crack his system ;-)
I have root as an account on my home system, and with no valid
password available (the password entry in /etc/passwd is * for the
said user), with a different name for the superuser. Everything works
fine, I can assure you...
> Most sane utilities that care should be checking some variation on
> "getuid()==0" or "geteuid()==0", and the kernel couldn't care less
> about names, only UID's (and more recently, capabilities).
I've found very few that have problems...
> If you want to try it out without diving in head-long, there's no
> reason you can't have both "root" and "bofh" in /etc/passwd, both
> with UID 0.
I've done that as well - it works equally well, and gives me root
access on certain systems where I'm co-admin without us having to sync
our passwords...
Best wishes from Riley.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/