[CentOS] Another Fedora decision

Wed Feb 4 20:20:24 UTC 2015
Liam O'Toole <liam.p.otoole at gmail.com>

On 2015-02-04, Valeri Galtsev
<galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, February 4, 2015 10:18 am, Keith Keller wrote:
>> On 2015-02-04, James B. Byrne
>> <byrnejb at 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.

-- 

Liam