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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
138
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24 answers

How do you make it obvious you are on a production system?

A few of us at my company have root access on production servers. We are looking for a good way to make it exceedingly clear when we have ssh'd in. A few ideas we have had are: Bright red prompt Answer a riddle before getting a shell Type a random…
Sionide21
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103
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6 answers

Adding a directory to $PATH in CentOS?

We just got our new server(s) up and we're running CentOS on them all. After successfully installing Ruby Enterprise Edition, I would now like to add the REE /bin (located at /usr/lib/ruby-enterprise/bin) directory to make it the default Ruby…
vonconrad
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13 answers

Linux: productive sysadmins without root (securing intellectual property)?

Is there any way to make a seasoned Linux syadmin productive without giving him full root access? This question comes from a perspective of protecting intellectual property (IP), which in my case, is entirely code and/or configuration files (i.e.…
Matt
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63
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7 answers

What permissions are needed to write a PID file in /var/run?

On Ubuntu: touch: cannot touch `/var/run/test.pid': Permission denied I am starting start-stop-daemon and like to write the PID file in /var/run start-stop-daemon is run as my-program-user /var/run setting is drwxr-xr-x 9 root root I like to…
s5804
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54
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4 answers

nice sudo or sudo nice?

is there any difference between running an intensive task over sudo with the following commands?: nice sudo [intensive command here] sudo nice [intensive command here] BTW this is for Linux 3.x.
Nicolas Laplante
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51
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4 answers

Linux: set up for remote sysadmin

Every now and then I get the odd request to provide remote support, troubleshooting and/or performance tuning on Linux systems. Larger companies often already have well established procedures to provide remote access to vendors/suppliers and I only…
HBruijn
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47
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8 answers

How do I list all superusers?

On a linux box, how do I list all users that possess identical privilege to the superuser (and even better, all users in general along with if they are able to escalate their privilege to that level or not)?
Eric
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42
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4 answers

Allow linux root user mysql root access without password

On cPanel when I am logged in as root and type "mysql" without hostname and password it gives me direct access to mysql root user. I would like to do this for one of my non-cpanel server where the linux root user gets password less logon to mysql…
user1066991
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42
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7 answers

Bash Scripting: Require script to be run as root (or with sudo)

I'm trying to write a bash script (in Ubuntu) that will backup a directory using tar. How can I do a check in the script so that it can only be run as root (or with sudo)? For instance, if a user runs the script, it should say that this script must…
Cory Plastek
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41
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9 answers

Multiple Linux sysadmins working as root

In our team we have three seasoned Linux sysadmins having to administer a few dozen Debian servers. Previously we have all worked as root using SSH public key authentication. But we had a discussion on what is the best practice for that scenario and…
Signum
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40
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7 answers

How do I disable root login in Ubuntu?

a while ago I gave root a password so I could log in as root and get some stuff done. Now I want to disable root login to tighten security, since I'm going to be exposing my serve to the internet. I've seen several ways of doing this (sudo passwd -l…
Ben Hymers
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35
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8 answers

Chown operation not permitted for root

I try to chown the owner of a file to root, but I can't. I'm doing this as root. I get the following message: chown: changing ownership of `ps': Operation not permitted
Peter Stuifzand
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33
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10 answers

Why su to root instead of logging in as root?

I've heard often that it is better to su to root rather than log in directly as the root user (and of course people also say that it's even better to use sudo). I've never really understood why one is better than the other(s), insight?
thepocketwade
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30
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4 answers

vim re-edit as root

I often open a file in vim, make some changes and when it's time to save the file is read-only.. (owned by another user). I'm looking for tips on how I could re-open the file as root and keep my changes without first saving it to a temporary file…
rkthkr
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2 answers

Why is the maximum length of OpenWrt’s root password 8 characters?

When I try to set root's password: root@OpenWrt:~# passwd Changing password for root Enter the new password (minimum of 5, maximum of 8 characters) Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers. It seems the maximum length is…
Alan42
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