HOW TO: Enabling root on a new server?

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 08:52:28AM -0400, Michael Williams wrote:
>  Also, if you follow the thread, you'll note that we've asked for root 
>  several times.  Yet, they keep asking us for the root password so that they 
>  can make changes.  A lot of canned responses, etc.

Again, no offence, but this is something you need to take up with
Cedant.  It's fairly obvious at this point that it's not an issue with
FreeBSD, but rather Cedant's hosting/service environment.

If a provider whom you've established service with continues to give you
"canned responses" and general runarounds, and you cannot get them to
give you something as simple as root-level access to your own machine,
then it's not worth hosting with them.  They sound inept, plain and
simple, and that's disappointing.

Not to dishearten you, but this is exactly why I try to avoid hosting
providers (and I happen to be one, just not commercial) -- "dedicated"
boxes turning out to be Plesk-managed virtual environments, or a VMware
box split across an undisclosed number of other users using the same
hardware, same disk, etc...  One customer gets DoS'd and it affects you
and everyone else.  Hard disk failure, same thing.  I prefer
co-location; give me access to a cooled datacenter, a secure cabinet,
and a network drop and leave the rest to me.  Of course, the difference
in price between the two methods is quite severe.  :-)

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |