Hi, I'm trying to enable remote root access to my server (I know you don't want to do it but i'll only have it open for a few hours). I can ssh as a user and then sudo to root and this works ok.

What i'm trying to do is login directly as root remotely. I've nulled the /etc/securetty file and changed "PermitRootLogin yes" in the /etc/ssh/ssh_config and sshd_config files.

When i login from my remote box, I see the following:
f004603:/ >ssh root@sydmon14
Read from remote host sydmon14: Connection reset by peer
Connection to sydmon14 closed.

When I check my loginlog, this is what I see.
Mar 2 15:54:29 localhost sshd[9308]: ROOT LOGIN REFUSED FROM 10.12.80.44
Mar 2 15:54:29 localhost sshd[9308]: fatal: monitor_read: unsupported request: 24

Is there anything else I should be doing or somewhere else I can check ???

Thanks

Did you restart your sshd to read your changes

I don't think you needed to 'null' the /etc/securetty file, but if after restarting sshd as Hiel Van Campen suggests it still doesn't work, can you try it again with ssh -v root@sydmon14 and post the output please?

Like the others said. You have to restart your ssh to read the changes. They are not dynamic.

Also, nulling (I assume you mean emptying the file) is a bad idea. If you want to allow root connections from another system, use the pty entries to control the number of terms allowed for root.

Example: /etc/securetty
pts/0
pts/1
and so on....

Enter as many pts entries as you want to allow terms for root. This will also allow you to telnet as root so you might want to disable the telnet-server in init.d or xinetd.d whichever you have if you haven't already.

I knew it was something simple. I restarted the SSHD daemon and all was okay. I've now put my entries back into /etc/securetty all is ok.

Thanks for your help.