Making a second superuser
 

I'm a newbie at Linux, and occasionally while trying to configure or customize some aspect of the system I've managed to screw it up so much that I need a friend to bail me out. I have a friend who helped me set up linux, and he has been entrusted with the root password, and occasionally I need him to SSH to my computer to help me out. Is there any way I can give him his own SU account instead? The main reason for that is so that I can tell us apart with the "who", "wall", "top", and "talk" commands when we're both logged in as root; which unfortunetly due to my inexperience (read incompetence) has been necessary all to frequently.

I realize this probably sounds like a dumb reason for making a second superuser, but it is MY computer, and I'd appreciate the ability to distinguish the person at the keyboard from the person on the modem at a glance.

How about changing the root pasword like right now, letting him ssh in as unprivileged user, not giving him root access and running your own Ircd on localhost?..

If you need him to view root-owned files, you can use "install" to copy them to his user area, let him make changes, diff the two files, ask for explanation or a second opinion if necessary, and make those changes yourself.

man sudo

That should be what you're looking for.

Some distributions do allow you to automatically set up different groups of users, so that some users have access to almost all root powers without being root.

However, this does not mean that there is any intrinsic support for multiple roots. You should consult your distro's documentation (or post your distro so we can help out).

I agree with unSpawn
Don't give out your root password, ever. It's like giving away the keys to your house, or your bank PIN number, it's bad. Make him a normal acct, give him whatever files he needs, and you can put them were he tells you to.

You have 2 advantages like this:
1. Security, 2. You'll learn a lot more.