I am new in using Red Hat Linux and want to add three of us with our own userid and password instead of a generic userid when logging into the root. This is for auditing so we can trace any mishaps.

Currently, we log in to the root with the same userid and a root password then we enter su - (without userid) and enter another password again. I just thought this is redundant process.

Is there a way to log in with just one userid and password with admin priviledge for maintenance such as server reboots and elimate su - without compromising the security.
Also I want to create a group and add these userids for priviledges just like in Windows.

Thanks for your help.

Assuming I understand your question, you might want to look into sudo. It allows you to dole out specific administrative duties, and it will likely meet your auditing requirements. (Every sudo invocation is logged to /var/log/secure.)

If you log in as user and then su -(su space dash) into being root, everything will be logged in the form user as root. So if you avoid logging in as root, it will be trackable to individual users.

Thanks for your replies.
I added my userid to the root and I still need to use our existing su - in order to read, write and execute files. If I don't use the su - I am not able to r/w/x files.

Although adding the userid and entering the command "who" now shows the list of userids and date/time logins which answer part of my question. I will check on how to use the sudo for specific duties. Thanks

Looking at /var/log/secure I get the following:

Mar 5 12:42:02 localhost userhelper[30850]: running '/usr/sbin/gnome-system-log' with root privileges on behalf of 'fred'

Mar 5 12:44:58 localhost su: pam_unix(su-l:session): session opened for user root by fred(uid=500)


Which is what I was trying to explain in post #3. It tells you when and who was using root privileges.