On 2015-02-04, Valeri Galtsev galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu wrote:
On Wed, February 4, 2015 10:18 am, Keith Keller wrote:
On 2015-02-04, James B. Byrne byrnejb@harte-lyne.ca wrote:
[SNIP]
(Users with sudo can still get a root shell, but that's not the same as logging in as root.)
I thought Ubuntu did this as well, but I haven't installed Ubuntu for quite a while. Anyone know?
Yes, Debian and its clones have full fledged root account, only with empty password hash (thus making it account for which no password will match). You can enable it by grabbing root shell using sudo, then using command passwd to set password. voila.
The behaviour you describe is to be found on Ubuntu, but not Debian. The Debian installer prompts for a root password, whereas the Ubuntu installer does not. The 'sudo' package is optional (in APT terminology) in the case of Debian.