Hello,
I created a user in my AIX 5.3 system and i modified /etc/passwd file in and assigned this user the uid=0 like root user.
The problem is that when this user log into the system through putty it asks for root password instead of the user password.
As a result of this, if i reset the password of this user then root password is also affected.
I am not sure if this is a putty problem or ssh.
Note that if this user logs in through telnet it doesnt have this problem (behaviour).
Any suggestion on this?
Thank you for your attention
The problem is due to you assigning a uid of 0 to the user. Anybody with a uid of 0 is root. It does not matter what username you assign to the user - as far as any Unix of Linux system is concerned that user is root. Therefore naturally the system is asking for the password associated with uid 0, i.e. the root password.
Assigning a uid of 0 to another user is very very bad practice.
What exactly are you trying to achieve? Describe it to us please.
i want to have other users with root authority other than root itself.
when i was creating these users i search around and i find out that the only way to do that is to give to these users the same uid as that of root user.
if this is the normal behaviour of a unix system then what do you suggest to do?
a) change uid and create root users in a different way?
b) or there is something i can do in order to change this behaviour?
1) Bad idea. Do they really, really need root authority? Frequently we get questions like 'how do I protect stuff against access by root user' because they designed a system where people need root but suddenly need to protect users from each other -- well you can't.
If you must give people root, you can use sudo for this, so the user can run 'sudo commandname' to have things run as root. sudo is extremely configurable, so you could let sudo do this with no password for certain users or user groups.
That's the only way to make them root, but not the only way to give them root access.
yes i am aware of sudo. i am using sudo in specific cases where users need to run a script or command that requires root access.however i need just 2 users to have root access "by default". i mean without using sudo. i wanted to see if there is a way to create users with root access without the need of using sudo. sudo is good but if you have users that can be trusted in using root user then sudo can be pretty annoying and frustrating.the problem is that these users are not considered as system administrators thats why i wanted to create different user than root but with root access.if sudo is the only alternative way then i guess i cannot avoid it.thank you for your help