Why should I not rename root?

[Brian Myners]

Can anyone think of a reason why I should not rename "root"?

If the Security system relies on a User Name/ Password pair, then having a known i.d means that any would-be hacker will be half way there.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

[CHRIS ANORUO]

Think of renaming your user id and see if you can log into the system!!!!!

[James R. Ferguson]

Andrew:

In reality, superuser privilege is known and/or conferred when the uid=0 regardless of whether the name is "root" or "Andrew", or whatever. Thus, you aren't really defeating much of anything for the determined cracker.

...JRF...

[John Palmer]

Well there may be lots of things that are coded to include the name 'root'.

A swift search of scripts in /sbin/init.d throw up a couple that do chown and rely on id returning uid=0(root). There may be lots of other things as well.

Being halfway there in knowing the username? are you a statistician?

Hopefully your password is not as easily guessed!

[Chris Garman · Accepted solution]

In theory there is no reason not to.
Once authenticated by login, you are known to the system by a UID only.

However there may be applications or system utilities that refer to superuser via the username of root, so obviously you would run into problems here.

I don't know the official HP line, but Id put money on the fact it is 'unsupported'. I hate it when they say that!!

[John Palmer]

One other thought, if you use vipw to modify the password file, it does consistency checks for user 'root'. If you haven't got one then vipw won't work'

[Cheryl Griffin]

Besides the fact that it is a UNIX standard, and who knows what little feature was hardcoded to look for root user.

Will it work - More than likely.
Has it been tested - No.
Would it be supported - Probably not.
Does it buy you anything - No.

[Brian Myners]

Thanks for the replies. My view was that as there are other mechanisms for protecting the root login, it was not worth running the risk of adversely effecting scripts / programs.

Thanks and points will be awarded shortly.

[Wodisch]

Hello Andrew,

it definitly *NOT* work! The username "root" is hardcoced into a lot of codefiles,
and configfiles; e.g. check "/etc/inetd.conf" - almost all services will not work, if
there is no "root" with UID=0! Same is true for many more files and programs.
I have tried this - it is not worth the effort :-(

HTH,
Wodisch