James Mckenzie wrote:
> I have one question: Can we change the name of root, or even get rid
> of it?
It should be possible, though I doubt you get much out of it.
Edit /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group, /etc/aliases (make sure
root's mail gets redirected elsewhere), /etc/cron*, work out where you
want the admin home directory to go, and fix it, and check that there's
nothing under /var that refers to root by name (I can't see anything at
a quick check).
You might do better using the FC3 rescue disk, rather than doing this on
a live system. Alternatively, switch to at most run level 2.
You might find that RPMs (including security updates) assume that there
is a real, working, admin account named root, and fail to install
properly. You will probably find that there are a few
You might just want to disable root's login: I haven't tried this (or
anything else I'm recommending), but I should imagine that reducing the
length of the shadow password in /etc/shadow would mean that no
encrypted password would match. That would mean you couldn't log in by
password. You would either have to set up sudo to do all your admin, add
another admin user with userID 0 (yes, you *are* supposed to be able to
have two: you manually edit /etc/passwd, /etc/security, /etc/group, et
al), or simply do admin through rebooting with the rescue CD.
Hope this helps,
James.
--
E-mail address: james | Users are not like normal particles; they wave when
@westexe.demon.co.uk | you observe them.
| -- Andrew Dalgleish
