ServerBuddies Support Blog

Disable direct root login via ssh

Please follow the given steps to disable direct root login access to the server via shell prompt.

STEP 1: Create a user and add it to the wheel group

SSH into your server as root and follow the below commands to create a user.

You can create any user instead of “test”.

STEP 2: Add user to wheel group

You can add the user at the end of the ‘group’ file.

Add the user test:

For CPanel Servers, do the following.

1. Log into your WHM and click on “Manage Wheel Group Users”.

2. Select the user (Here it is “test”) and click ‘Add to group’.

3. Before disable the root access, check if the user can login and su – to gain root privileges.

SSH into your server as ‘test’

Login as: test

Password : enteryouruserpasswordhere

su –

password: enter root password here

STEP 3: Disable Direct Root Login

1. Copy and paste this line to edit the file for SSH logins

2. Find the line

3. Uncomment it (Remove #) and change it to look like

4. Next, find the line

5. Uncomment it (Remove #) and make it look like PermitRootLogin no

6. Save the file.

Now, no one will be able to login to root with out first logging in as ‘test’ and ’su -’ to root.

Disable journaling in ext3 file system

We know that EXT3 file system is nothing but EXT2 + a e. This allows faster FSCK process and avoids metadata corruption.

We can disable journaling (i.e convert EXT3 to EXT2) using tune2fs command.

Now the journaling is removed from /dev/xdy partition. The file system for this partition is know EXT2 rather than EXT3.

This is normally used when you want to re-size a partition.

If you want to convert it back to EXT3, use the following command:

Note: The partition should be un-mounted before converting the file-systems. For converting EXT2 to EXT3 you can also have the partition re-mounted as read-only too, but the former is safer.