Change root password best practice?

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#1 Fri, 07/03/2009 - 04:50
jahlewis

Change root password best practice?

What is the best way to change the the root password that is used by the system and the superuser in virutalmin/webmin? Will changing this password impact the two registered webmin servers I use for DNS slaves? Is there anything else that could be impacted by changing the root password?

On a side note, what is the best approach to allow a user to have the equivilent privileges as root, so that we can show accountability in the logs etc. for system management tasks.

Thanks.

Fri, 07/03/2009 - 07:43
ronald
ronald's picture

I would change password through logging into the box over ssh and type: passwd

then type in the password and confirm. The slaves shouldn't be affected by this as they have (normally) other passwords.

You can create a user in webmin-webmin-webmin users and give that user access to certain modules he needs to handle. You can create a group or several groups with different access modes and add types of admins to those groups.

A group that handles only virtual-servers, a group to handle DNS, etc.

I wouldn't give root access that easily, in a big corporation such as were I work, only a few mandated users (normally teamleaders) have root access and they report to 1 or 2 managers, who in their turn have to report to a managing director, who in his turn needs to, ... well you get the picture..

Every task done on the server is being documented by the technicians

Fri, 07/03/2009 - 15:51
Joe
Joe's picture

There's tons of docs on the subject of ACLs and users and groups in Webmin here:

http://doxfer.com/Webmin/WebminUsers

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