After installing Red Hat I want to allow my Prof to access to our server without a password, or rather that's the way he wants it. Ran into some great difficulty in trying to set up a normal user account without a password. Is there any other way to set up a user account with root permissions and no password??

Thanks.

Ruth,

HUGE security risk, but here it goes...

Edit the password file and copy and paste the user root. On the new line rename the root user to whatever.

Edit the shadow file. If your system supports shadow passwords. Again copy the root line and paste it. Rename the root user as you did before and after the first colon you see a bunch of junk, that is the encryped password. Delete the entire field so the line looks like this:

whatever::11252:0::::: # the numbers may be different

This removes the password for the whatever user.

Prepare to get hacked...

Setting up .rhosts and having professor no password rsh in is a better idea. At least a tiny bit more secure.

Gary

I got it to work, but my professor said he should be able to Telnet into our machine. It won't let him because it requires a password. Any idea if it is possible for him to Telnet into our machine?

AHH.... PLEASE do not do this. Telnet is bad enough. Telnet without is password is crazy. Telnet without a password for a user that has root privs?? At a BARE minimum set up ssh with a key-pair. This should make everyone happy. He will not have to type a password and you will have a chance to keep that Linux box long enough to learn

what i want to know is why cant he type in a password? its probably next top the easiest thing in the world.

This professor is either an idiot or he is testing you. Even then.. he sounds like an idiot.

if this is for an assignment... you could just log in as root and type rm -Rf *

then just tell your RETART professor that his server was hacked and that you should recieve an A++ because you succesfully removed the first line of defense. Then cite the lack of functionality as evidence.