How to permit SSH root Login in Ubuntu 18.04
![How to permit SSH root Login in Ubuntu 18.04](https://storage.googleapis.com/ubuntu-18/images/permit-ssh-root-login-ubuntu.png)
SSH root login is disabled by default in Ubuntu 18.04. SSH server for Ubuntu provides by the openssh-server package and root login is controlled by the PermitRootLogin directive in the OpenSSH server configuration (sshd_config file):
You can check the current status by running the following command:
grep -i "rootlogin" /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Root login is disabled, if the PermitRootLogin directive is commented out (# in front) or its value is not set to yes.
![root login is controlled by the PermitRootLogin directive in the OpenSSH server configuration](https://storage.googleapis.com/ubuntu-18/images/permitrootlogin-ubuntu-ssh-config.png)
If you want to enable ssh root login, do the following steps with root privileges:
- Open the /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
- Uncomment the line PermitRootLogin and set the value to yes:
PermitRootLogin yes
- To make the new setting take effect, restart the ssh server:
systemctl restart sshd.service
Now that we have enabled ssh root login, you can try ssh using the root user from a remote computer:
ssh root@192.168.1.100
Note that Ubuntu root account does not have a password by default. So if you want to log in to root ssh account, first you muse have set a password for the root user.
Allowing the root user to login over SSH is a not a good idea. we don't need to login as root to get root privileges. You can ssh to your Ubuntu server using a user who has sudo privileges, then switch to the root user account using sudo -i command.
Next: Change Ubuntu SSH Port