Some users of my client are frequently changing root(administrative) password of ubuntu.
My client is administrative user of that system. How to prevent other users to change administrative password?
I know that you can change the root password easily by dropping to the root shell prompt from the recovery menu, if you select the recovery option on boot. So these other users may just be restarting the system and choosing the recovery option on boot, dropping to that prompt and changing it from there without needing root access.
You could disable this by removing the recovery entry from the grub list using a program such as grub-customizer, which requires root access to run. Once this option is disabled, it will remove the recovery mode option from grub and prevent at least one way by which any user can change the password. Just keep in mind that should the Ubuntu installation stop working properly and require the recovery options, you'll have to find a way to undo this change without access to the terminal (probably through a live CD).
Of course, it could also be that your client simply chooses easy to guess root passwords that the other users can find through trial-and-error. That's worth looking into.
sudo su
and change the root password without booting into recovery mode. If they don't need sudo privileges, then they should be removed from the sudoers list.
Jul 14, 2012 at 17:17
As the multiple commenters have explained, your client needs to make all the other users Standard users, who no longer have "root" privileges.
He/she can do this by going to System Settings...User Accounts.
sudo
. They use their password, not the root password, to do this. Furthermore, non-administrative users do not have the power to change other users' passwords. You may want to edit your question for clarification. Your client is an administrator on the system. Are the other users administrators, too?Other Users
from sudoers list.