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Questions tagged [root]

root is the default administrative account for Unix-based systems. It is comparable to the Administrator account of a Windows system.

root is the default administrative account for Unix-based systems. It is comparable to the Administrator account of a Windows system.

548 questions
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8 answers

Accidently ran "chown www-data:www-data / -R" as root

I just ran this a few seconds ago. I managed to do Ctrl - C as soon as I realized what I started doing. So far the only directory it's started going through is /bin. I'm afraid to do anything else. So far I realized I can't use su as my normal user…
Will
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7 answers

How to configure vsftpd to allow root logins?

I'm on SLES 10.1, and trying to configure vsftpd to allow root logins. Does anyone know how to do this? So far, I have this: local_enable=YES chroot_local_user=NO userlist_enable=YES userlist_deny=NO userlist_file=/etc/vsftpd.users And I've added…
user8269
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votes
8 answers

Should we disable the root user?

Should we remove the root password, disable remote login and basically require adminstrators to use sudo to perform administrative actions?
jldugger
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23
votes
6 answers

Ubuntu - can non-root user run process in chroot jail?

Is it possible for a non-root user to run a chroot process on Ubuntu?
Hawkeye
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21
votes
4 answers

Ordinary users are able to read /etc/passwd, is this a security hole?

ls -l /etc/passwd gives $ ls -l /etc/passwd -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1862 2011-06-15 21:59 /etc/passwd So an ordinary user can read the file. Is this a security hole?
Ankur Agarwal
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20
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9 answers

root login or sudo user for server administration?

I'm trying to understand the technical arguments/security implications between ssh'ing with root directly, or making an auxiliary sudo user in the context of maintaining a server. To clarify, we're talking about servers owned by a single admin. For…
alex.b.bg
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5 answers

Remote Linux Admin Consultant - Best Practice

We are engaging a consultant in India as our Linux Administrator. We don't know him well and he requires Root access to all our servers to do his job (including a security audit). What is the best practice for enabling a remote consultant for such…
Anderson Tess
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votes
4 answers

Procedure to forward root email to external email

I would like to forward the emails received by root to an external email on an Ubuntu node. I have seen this post, but it does not explain much about the procedure to follow. There are some other posts available online, but they are often incomplete…
Jérôme Verstrynge
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17
votes
3 answers

Rsync over ssh with root access on both sides

I have one older ubuntu server, and one newer debian server and I am migrating data from the old one to the new one. I want to use rsync to transfer data across to make final migration easier and quicker than the equivalent tar/scp/untar process. As…
Tim Abell
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16
votes
2 answers

AWS - removing ec2-user from sudo list

I'm running a production-level Amazon ec2 instance, and I want to close out root privileges to all users. Normally, when one logs in to the instance as ec2-user, the ec2-user immediately gets sudo privileges, which I am trying to do away with in…
Nicholas Finch
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16
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6 answers

Why (or how) does the number of open file descriptors in use by root exceed ulimit -n?

Our server recently ran out of file descriptors, and in regards to that I have some questions. ulimit -n is supposed to give me the maximum number of open file descriptors. That number is 1024. I checked the number of open file descriptors by…
oligofren
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15
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2 answers

how do i perform root actions from non-root account?

I want to be able to restart services from a php-script. running under the www-user account. What's the preferred way to perform these actions? I recon I can place create a file with que'd commands, read by CRON, but the solution itches. What I'm…
user65297
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5 answers

Allow root login from one IP address only

I have centos5. Is there any way that i can log into my vps server with root user from particular ip address only. I have read that i can use private key to login into sshd. But the problem is i am using SFTP for all my webistes and i don't want non…
John
14
votes
6 answers

SSH - How to include "-t command" in the ~/.ssh/config file

I use ~/.ssh/config file so that I can easily enter ssh myserver and it'll provide the correct username, port, hostname, identity file, etc. However for many servers, the first thing I do is enter su - to log in as root. I can do this all in one…
Amandasaurus
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14
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6 answers

Correct user names when tracking /etc/ in git repository and committing as root

We use git to track changes in /etc/ on our servers. Administrators work as root when changing files in /etc/, and thus their commits have author root This is not very satisfying since you cannot see which admin actually did the…
cweiske
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