Hello,
I have a server with 2 hard drives in raid for RHEL and 16 harddrives in raid 10 for storage. I was not allowed to have the root password just in case because "we don't give root password". A few days ago it crashed asking for root password for maintenance and had to restore the system to factory settings losing all user settings and updates (wich I paid for every year).

I'm not a linux guru but i can mount the system with a live cd, edit /etc/shadow and delete the root password but what I don't know is the consequence of deleting the root password. Can something go wrong after that? Can it have boot problems or something else? Can they set traps to prevent this?

Server is not connected to internet and it will never be.

Since you can boot from a CD, you can

1) Run fsck on your "real" drives from the CD without mounting them (which is what you should have done).
2) Mount your "real" file system and chroot to it, and then set (or unset) the "root" password using the usual tools. (No need to know your "root" password for this since you are already logged in as "root" from the CD).

So, first, not giving you the root password but letting you boot from CD was rather foolish on the part of the management that didn't want you to have it. And, second, disabling the root account (which is all removing the root password accomplishes) has no deleterious consequences.

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If you "report" your post, the moderator(s) might move it to the Security forum where you might get more targeted responses.
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Note that Ubuntu installs with "root" disabled, and works quite well. (Personally, I like to be able to work on administration tasks as "root," so I always enable "root" on my systems, but most Ubuntu users don't bother to do so.)

1 members found this post helpful.

I don't need more targeted responses. Yours is precise. Thank you.