I found a bug when I followed the first steps to creating a securing the server. The problem : You don’t know the password for root when creating a droplet with an ssh key Reproduce the problem : Create a droplet with an ssh key Connect to server with ssh key Create a new user and add ssh connection Disable ssh for root (security measure) Try to do sudo with the new user You’re asked to enter a password for root but DigitalOcean didn’t send the password by email because I created the droplet with an ssh key.

(Bug) Create droplet with SSH then disable SSH for root

Posted December 28, 2015
Security Ubuntu

I found a bug when I followed the first steps to creating a securing the server.

The problem :

You don’t know the password for root when creating a droplet with an ssh key

Reproduce the problem :

Create a droplet with an ssh key
Connect to server with ssh key
Create a new user and add ssh connection
Disable ssh for root (security measure)
Try to do sudo with the new user

You’re asked to enter a password for root but DigitalOcean didn’t send the password by email because I created the droplet with an ssh key.

Mehdiway

jamieson • December 29, 2015

You have to exit your login session and re-login in in order to pick up the new sudo group membership permissions. (or use Userify, but that will only do the user creation part… disabling root is still recommended.)

Mehdiway • December 29, 2015

I just noticed the option to reset root password from Access menu of the droplet.

Mehdiway • December 28, 2015

Yes I added the new user to sudo group, but without a password.
I created a .ssh folder on the home directory with a authorized_keys file containing my public key

azaraks • December 28, 2015

Weird since it should ask password of the new user… Is that username on sudoer list?

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Eris Castrogivanni • December 30, 2015

Hey there,

That’s not really a bug: it works this way across pretty much every Linux distribution. “sudo” asks for the current user’s password (if a password at all), not the root password. “su” is what asks for the root password.

Generally, what we recommend is setting a password for the new user when you create the root user, but keeping passwords disabled over SSH. This way, you have a password you can use when sudo-ing and logging in through our VNC Console, but SSH remains secure. That’s how I set up most of my droplets, and it works quite nicely.

I hope that helps! :)

Best, Eris Platform Support Specialist

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