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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?

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    By default there is no root password in Ubuntu. Instead, administrators can run commands as root with 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? Jul 14, 2012 at 17:17
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    Ask him to make their account as STANDARD Account or Remove the Other Users from sudoers list.
    – atenz
    Jul 14, 2012 at 17:18
  • Remove their ability to use sudo
    – Sepero
    Jul 14, 2012 at 19:27

2 Answers 2

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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.

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    As long as the users are sudoers, they can just do 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
  • I guess this resembles distantly to What OP asked , but since he didn't clarified how do they get access , so this answer is still valid.
    – atenz
    Jul 14, 2012 at 17:20
  • As far as I know, any account still needs to know the root password using a sudo prefix command. But I'm new to Ubuntu, perhaps I'm wrong.
    – Alex
    Jul 17, 2012 at 2:51
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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.

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