[TriLUG] to delete root, or not too?

Tanner Lovelace clubjuggler at gmail.com
Tue Nov 14 10:19:41 EST 2006


On 11/14/06, Aaron S. Joyner <aaron at joyner.ws> wrote:
> Philip and Jason's understanding is correct, Tanner's assertion that su
> is changing to UID 0 by default is incorrect.  The obvious reasons being
> two fold, first off su uses PAM, and the PAM module pam_unix requires a
> username to know which password to validate against.  More simply
> though, even if you didn't use pam, it's still got to know which entry
> in /etc/{passwd,shadow} to look at, as there can be more than one UID 0
> (also as previously discussed).

Yeah, I realized later that what I meant to say was not that su - changes
to the uid 0 but rather sudo changes to user id 0.  Sudo uses the password
of the user invoking the sudo command, and then changes to uid 0, which
is the account with "root" privileges.

Cheers,
Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace
clubjuggler at gmail dot com
http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
(fieldless) In fess two roundels in pale, a billet fesswise and an
increscent, all sable.



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