On Sun, 29 Apr 2012, Rick Engebretson wrote:

> The youngsters were a couple of engineers leaving for Silicon Valley in a day 
> or two, so I didn't have a lot of time to figure out Ubuntu. I use the 
> command "su" for xterm root use, and couldn't get root access in any way.

Hi there. Extreme old-timer here, professional UNIX admin for almost 20 
years, amateur UNIX user for longer.

Logging in as root and the su command have always been a very weak part of 
UNIX security. Over the past decade or so, with sudo becoming more 
ubiquitous, root logins have become somewhat deprecated. Even on UNIX-like 
systems where root/su are still used, there is not one security document 
that'll not put "install sudo and disable root logins" somewhere near the 
top.

This isn't an Ubuntu thing. It's one of the things where Ubuntu is 
following current security protocols.


-Yaron

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