Help: Unable to change to SU through SSH

[John.Dickinson at nominet.org.uk]

Nils Vogels wrote on 13/05/2006 09:43:24:

> Maan Jee wrote on 13-05-2006 10:31:
> > Hi
> >
> > I have created a user "admin" and using that to login through SSH from 
a
> > remote machine. But I CANNOT "su", change to the root login? How can I 
do
> > that?
> Add the user "admin" to the "wheel" group in /etc/groups.

I would recommend that you dont create an admin user. Create normal user 
accounts named after the user who will be logging in. Add users who will 
need to be able to do admin tasks to the wheel group. Then install sudo 
and configure it to allow users in the wheel group to run commands as 
root.

sudo has many advantages over using su. 
1. It logs every action so you can find out what you and other admin users 
did. This gives an audit trail and is very useful when you forget how you 
did something.
2. It puts a time limit on how long a user can run root tasks without 
re-entering their password. This prevents a user from forgetting they are 
root and leaving an unattended root console when they go to get a coffee.
3. You can, if necessary, control which commands a user can run as root.

Hope this helps
John