I want to make sure I have this correct before locking myself out. Is this the proper thing to do to create another user to log into root.

1) Add a user to the wheel group. Lets say user xxxxx with password yyyyy to the wheel group.

2) Log into SSH

3) Type
pico -w /etc/ssh/sshd_config
PermitRootLogin no
Ctrl+X then Y and enter

4) /etc/rc.d/init.d/sshd restart

5) Log into putty as user xxxxx with password yyyyy

6) type
su rootloginusername

7) Then log into root

Is this sequence correct before I do it?

*edited - I logged as user xxxxxx with pass yyyyyy. Typed
su rootloginusername
It asked for a password and I entered the root password and got an error message. I really want to get this working before I turn off SSH.

Hey doc…this is how I do it...you already added the wheel user and make sure that user is aloud SSH access.

Open putty and login to your server...


login as: username
username@72.29.*.*'s password:(enter userpassword)
Last login: Mon Oct 23 21:32:13 2006 from username
username@cp [~]# su -
Password:(enter root password)
root@cp [~]#

This did it Altec. I remembered reading the redhat security thread and jailing all of my users. Once I enabled shell access it worked.

Thanks for your help, works like a charm.

Not a problem.

When I su, I usually do 'su -'
I can't remember whats the difference b/w with and without

The '-' execs the su user's dot scripts and drops you into the su user's home directory. If you don't use the '-' then you'll switch users, but still be in the directory you were in when you switch and have the old user's enviornment variables.

Oh ok, thanks for answering.