On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 11:53 PM, Jay K <jay.krell@cornell.edu> wrote:
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>> > If I chroot then I can't do much at all right?
>> > Unless I replicate/link like the entire system, minus login.
>>
>> You sai'd that you want to limit them, not I.
>
>
> I just don't want them to be able to login as root.
> B And I don't want a password for root.
> B If they are on the console though, ok either way.
> B That is a laxness I failed to mention would be ok.

They don't need root at all. root will be only your account as will be
root password

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>
>> just test it. If your user is not in wheel then he can use login and
>> enter root password, but even when he knows that password login will
>> not enter root shell as you are not in wheel, but if you know root
>> password then you don't need to play those games and you can destroy
>> something directly ;-)
>
>
> I will maybe poke around more.
> But again, I don't want anything to depend on root password.
> It should be empty and still be secure -- only allow password
> login from console, not remote. Only allow ssh access remotely.

sudo is there to solve your problem to not depend on root password,
login to console via ssh and eg. only with keys is easly doable with
ssh

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>
>
> And I making sense?
> I neither want to remember passwords nor have anyone be able to guess them.
> B Which is almost a contradiction.
> If someone is at the physical console, they can do anything.
> So I should be able to login to the console w/o password.
> And remote access only via ssh.

You need password at least for root to be able to maintain that server
locally (in fact you can go easily even around this if you have local
access), but for users you don't need passwords at all as they will be
connecting only remotely and you can create ssh keys for them. But
it's not good idea to create keys without password for users, so they
will need to remember password for their ssh keys

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>
>
> Since I haven't figured out how to configure this, instead I set the
password
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> to "*"
> which disallows any password-based login, including physical console.
> If I ever really need console access, but haven't lost remote access,
> I should be able to reboot remotely and then go to the machine and alter
> the boot command line like to use single user mode. I certainly reboot
> the machines remotely sometimes (e.g. for an upgrade). Though I haven't
> needed single user mode yet, in a long time.
>
>
> Thanks,
> B - Jay