I like consistency. It makes things easier, and me faster and more accurate/efficient/amazing to watch etc. etc.
As Ubuntu is the 4th Linux distro I have ever had to work with (first being OpenBSD, the FreeBSD, then Red Hat) I was getting a little annoyed that after an install ‘su’ did not work as I was previously used to.
Ubuntu chose instead to lock the root account out and force you into using the ‘sudo’ command. This means that to do anything as ‘root’ you use
sudo <command to run>
The system will then prompt you for *your* password and, if you have sufficient permissions in the sudoers file, will execute the command you provided with root level permissions.
There are of course some benefits, mainly centered around security. But there are also some drawbacks such as having to maintain the sudoers file, and command output redirection. But given that OpenBSD is considered one of the most secure Unix operating systems around and they don’t feel the need to do it this way, I like to change this behaviour immediately after the first post install reboot.
To enable the root account, logon to the system with your account and run
sudo passwd root
The system will prompt you for *your* password. It will then prompt you to enter a new password for the root account, and then to confirm it a second time. Once this is done you can just switch to the root use using the plain old ‘su’ command.
Oh, and if you’re worried about being able to log directly onto SSH as the root account, simply edit
/etc/ssh/sshd_config
and change the line
PermitRootLogin yes
to
PermitRootLogin no
This will ensure that you have to login as a normal user and su to root from remote connections.
If you wish to revert back to the default Ubuntu behaviour, simply run (under your own logon)
sudo passwd -l root
