The essence of root is to have unrestricted command of the system. You could tweak it with SELinux (there used to be a demo site where anyone could log on as root, but its power was crippled through the access system), but that's not the point. The point is that this is the wrong solution to your problem.

Now, you haven't said what your problem is, but if you don't trust these users to keep their hands off the root password, they have no business being root. If they need to administer the webserver, or various hardware devices, or the warp drive or whatever, set up a solution for that. Create a super-powered group, give it all the access it needs, and add them to it. If they need to execute root-only system calls, write some setuid programs.

Of course a user with that kind of access (and a bit of knowledge) could probably easily hack the system, but at least you're putting things where they belong.

PS. There are many ways to arrange root access for yourself without the password; for one, if you're in /etc/sudoers (without restrictions) you only need your own password to become root, e.g. with sudo bash. But you simply shouldn't need to go there.

The essence of root is to have unrestricted command of the system. You could tweak it with SELinux (there used to be a demo site where anyone could log on as root, but its power was crippled through the access system), but that's not the point. The point is that this is the wrong solution to your problem.

Now, you haven't said what your problem is, but if you don't trust these users to keep their hands off the root password, they have no business being root. If they need to administer the webserver, or various hardware devices, or the warp drive or whatever, set up a solution for that. Create a super-powered group, give it all the access it needs, and add them to it. If they need to execute root-only system calls, write some setuid programs.

Of course a user with that kind of access (and a bit of knowledge) could probably easily hack the system, but at least you're working with the OS security model, not against it.

PS. There are many ways to arrange root access for yourself without the password; for one, if you're in /etc/sudoers (without restrictions) you only need your own password to become root, e.g. with sudo bash. But you simply shouldn't need to go there.

The essence of root is to have unrestricted command of the system. You could tweak it with SELinux (there used to be a demo site where anyone could log on as root, but its power was crippled through the access system), but that's not the point. The point is that this is the wrong solution to your problem.

Now, you haven't said what your problem is, but if you don't trust these users to keep their hands off the root password, they have no business being root. If they need to administer the webserver, or various hardware devices, or the warp drive or whatever, set up a solution for that. Create a super-powered group, give it all the access it needs, and add them to it. If they need to execute root-only system calls, write some setuid programs.

Of course a user with that kind of access (and a bit of knowledge) could probably easily hack the system, but at least you're putting things where they belong.

The essence of root is to have unrestricted command of the system. You could tweak it with SELinux (there used to be a demo site where anyone could log on as root, but its power was crippled through the access system), but that's not the point. The point is that this is the wrong solution to your problem.

Now, you haven't said what your problem is, but if you don't trust these users to keep their hands off the root password, they have no business being root. If they need to administer the webserver, or various hardware devices, or the warp drive or whatever, set up a solution for that. Create a super-powered group, give it all the access it needs, and add them to it. If they need to execute root-only system calls, write some setuid programs.

Of course a user with that kind of access (and a bit of knowledge) could probably easily hack the system, but at least you're putting things where they belong.

PS. There are many ways to arrange root access for yourself without the password; for one, if you're in /etc/sudoers (without restrictions) you only need your own password to become root, e.g. with sudo bash. But you simply shouldn't need to go there.