Root Telnet

lcwilson95 · 08-11-2006, 10:16 AM

I am unable to login as root via telnet. I can login as any user, but not root. I also can not su root after I login as myself.

Can someone help me?

timmeke · 08-11-2006, 10:44 AM

What error message do you get? Did you supply the correct password?

root's telnet access may be blocked by additional security measures, like a PAM module.

Frankly, I wouldn't recommend root to login remotely, in any way. And certainly not via regular telnet (plain text passwords are then sent over the network!).
Rather, login as a regular user via ssh, then su to root.

lcwilson95 · 08-11-2006, 11:20 AM

I didn't receive any errors excpet incorrect login. I know the password works because I can log in to the sever from the console with it.

Tell me about PAM.

bathory · 08-11-2006, 04:07 PM

If you're ABSOLUTELY sure you want to use telnet as root then edit /etc/securetty and uncomment one or more of the remote ttys (like pts/0) to allow root to remote connect to them.
Do as timmeke told you. Use ssh and su to root.

Regards

timmeke · 08-16-2006, 02:34 AM

PAM, or Pluggable Authentication Modules, allow you to define the rules for authentication, for changing passwords, for obtaining/changing sessions, etc for applications that support this.
They also contain the rules for general system authentication, for instance.

The modules are typically defined in files in /etc/pam.d.

Read "man pam" for further details.