topic Blank root password in Operating System - HP-UX

Blank root password

Alejandro Rosales_1 — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 01:30:34 GMT

Can anybody tell me if its 'possible' to have a HPUX 11 system with the root password empty?

I know it can be done, and I know its way unsafe, but I was wondering if there could be some other issues, like a daemon not starting, or something else malfunctioning.

Re: Blank root password

Michael Tully — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 01:36:23 GMT

Yes it is possible. This is certainly something you *should never* do. Leaving it blank creates opportunities for unknown security problems.

Only item that I can think of is a background job that may start from either 'cron' or 'at' which requires a password that starts as a different user, and requires 'root'.

Re: Blank root password

Patrick Wallek — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 03:32:28 GMT

Sure, it's possible! But it is definitely not recommended. Especially if there are multiple people logging in. I wouldn't want just anyone having root access to any of my machines.

I seriously doubt if any daemons would be affected. Most things like that are started from /sbin/init.d scripts which are run as root at started. Some may do an "su - user -c ..." to start, but no root passwd won't affect that. Others things are started via inetd (/etc/sevices and /etc/inetd.conf), but inetd is a root daemon too, so no problems there.

The only problem I can foresee with not having a root password is someone logging in as root and doing a 'rm -R /*'

That would definitely cause a malfunction.........

Re: Blank root password

Stefan Schulz — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 07:42:44 GMT

Hi,

besides the security issue there is no problem. Your system will run perfectly fine ... at least as long as nobody deletes something important.

When i came to my current company i found all HP-UX Systems with a blank root password. So i know that everything runs without a problem. But is was the first thing i changed.

Hope this helps

Regards Stefan

Re: Blank root password

Joaquin Gil de Vergara — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 10:48:28 GMT

if you assume all things that people above me say... no problem!

to do it

# passwd -d root

be carefull!

Re: Blank root password

melvyn burnard — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 11:43:33 GMT

well one thing I know does NOT work if there is no password set, no matter who the login user is, is ftp.
But I have to say you are asking for problems if you do not set a password for root.