[leaf-user] Public key authentication and root

[Greg Morgan]

I have used "Public key authentication before" as described by http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.53b/htmldoc/Chapter8.html#8. The user's passwords were never enabled on the host. A public key part of public/private key had to be supplied by each user desiring access to the host. What bothers me is that root has to have a password. All the other users are using public key authentication, but poor old root is just hanging out in the breeze. I could not find a way to turn on public key authentication for root. I played with /etc/securetty. I wanted to disable remote access by root but allow another user to use public key to access the server, then su to root. One problem arises if I disable root's password, then the console of the server is useless. At times a person still has to logon at the server as root, but public key authentication is not available there. My google searches produced RFCs, etc., but nothing meaningful.

Has anyone tried this?
Is there too much paranoia here? Should I just be happy that the whole session for root is encrypted?
Or someone has done this, but I am approaching it in the wrong manor?

Any thoughts or pointers would be appreciated.

Greg Morgan



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