freebsd stable - Jul 2007 - HOW TO: Enabling root on a new server?

Hi All,

I recently purchased a co-located server from Cedant and need to  
enable the root user.  It's running FreeBSD 6.1.  Currently there  
appears to be no root user enabled on the server.  I can't even
"su"
to root.  I've tried using "pw" to add my user to
"wheel" but I
receive a warning informing me that I must be root to even do such a  
thing.  You can see my quandary.  Please advise.

Regards,
Michael

On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 11:06:07PM -0400, Michael Williams
wrote:
>  I recently purchased a co-located server from Cedant and need to enable
the
>  root user.  It's running FreeBSD 6.1.  Currently there appears to be
no root
>  user enabled on the server.  I can't even "su" to root. 
I've tried using
>  "pw" to add my user to "wheel" but I receive a warning
informing me that I
>  must be root to even do such a thing.  You can see my quandary.  Please 
>  advise.
FreeBSD, out-of-the-box, definitely includes user "root", and there is
no password (unless during the installation you choose to set one).

This sounds like a question you should be talking to Cedant/your
provider about.  What you purchased may not be a real co-located box
that's personally dedicated to you -- it may be something shared with
other people, and something that Cedant maintains.  This is purely
speculative on my part, because I know nothing about their services.
But this really does sound like something specific to their servers.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

Well, that's just it.  As with many large corporations, there appear  
to be a great many degrees of separation between the folks we're  
talking to and the folks we *need* to talk to.  That aside, we've  
been assured that it is absolutely our own dedicated server. (It'd  
better be as we just upgraded from Virtual to Dedicated hardware).   
I'm at wits end regarding this issue though.  I'm tempted to simply  
go back to hosted solutions instead of dealing with this.  Anyway, if  
you can think of *any* solution to this issue, it'd be much  
appreciated.  For the record, the following are my Plesk Control  
Panel offerings for SSH login:

/bin/sh
/bin/csh
/bin/tcsh
/bin/sh(chrooted)
/usr/local/bin/bash

. . .I've tried each, to no avail.  I'm absolutely 100% lost.

Regards,
Michael



On Jul 13, 2007, at 8:00 AM, freebsd-stable-request@freebsd.org wrote:
> Message: 16
> Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:35:52 -0700
> From: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org>
> Subject: Re: HOW TO:  Enabling root on a new server?
> To: Michael Williams <gberz3@gmail.com>
> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
> Message-ID: <20070713033552.GA86758@eos.sc1.parodius.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 11:06:07PM -0400, Michael Williams wrote:
>>  I recently purchased a co-located server from Cedant and need to  
>> enable the
>>  root user.  It's running FreeBSD 6.1.  Currently there appears to
>> be no root
>>  user enabled on the server.  I can't even "su" to root. 
I've
>> tried using
>>  "pw" to add my user to "wheel" but I receive a
warning informing
>> me that I
>>  must be root to even do such a thing.  You can see my quandary.   
>> Please
>>  advise.
>
> FreeBSD, out-of-the-box, definitely includes user "root", and
there is
> no password (unless during the installation you choose to set one).
>
> This sounds like a question you should be talking to Cedant/your
> provider about.  What you purchased may not be a real co-located box
> that's personally dedicated to you -- it may be something shared with
> other people, and something that Cedant maintains.  This is purely
> speculative on my part, because I know nothing about their services.
> But this really does sound like something specific to their servers.