To improve security on a RHE server of mine, I disabled root login using my sshd_config. Of course, I can no longer login as root via SSH/SFTP on this machine. I'd like to keep root locked off indefinitely, but I can't figure out another way to edit system files via SFTP.

Is there an alternative to root for the upload and download system files by SFTP? I'm guessing there's an easy answer, but my searches didn't turn anything up. Thanks!

Why not ssh to a normal account and su?

My root account is not able to be directly logged in to so I ssh as myself then use "su -" (which you need to know the root password) to get to root. Alternatively, if you have set it up, you can use "sudo su -" and you only need to know your own password and be in the sudoers file in /etc

let's hope there's no other way.

Oh, I have been su'ing over to root from an admin account while connecting via SSH, but I don't ordinarily use a command-line editor for FTP-based edits. I use BBEdit and Interarchy, among others, to put and get files from my server. I don't know of a way to tell an SFTP program to su or sudo, or if there's even a way? I realize I could be using vi or emacs or another command line editor, but my systems are somewhat complicated and it will be hard to do things that way. Thanks for the help