[LUNI] problems running up2date from ssh connection

[Martin Maney]

On Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 03:14:23PM -0600, Redmond Militante wrote:
> this was right on the money.  ssh'ing as a non root user, then su to root,

That's 'cause I've been there, done that...  :-/

> then trying to run xterm, it fails with the same error. however, if i ssh
> as root, i can run xterm and up2date successfully.  is this a glitch in
> the new version of openssh?  i guess problem solved, but - is it a good
> idea to ssh as root?  seems like you should be able to...

I've seen it argued both ways, and I can't see that either position has any
killer arguments.  The X permissions nuisance and the recently publicized
"password keystroke counting & timing" issue both push towards using "ssh
root at ...".  I forget what the good arguments for avoiding that are - I don't
think that the slight additional acountability through su logging matters
much, but I don't co-admin machines, so I can see where that could be an
important advantage in the right circumstances.

I've done it both ways, not entirely voluntarily - Debian disabled root
logins in an [open]ssh upgrade somewhere back there, and I found it to be
quite livable, but I don't use remote admin tools that require X.  Seems
almost like a contradiction in terms, somehow.  :-)

-- 
You arguably have quite a few inalienable rights,
but being taken seriously isn't one of them.
Neither is being respected.  -- Rick Moen  <linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/>