What If SSH Root Login Disabled and “su” Getting Permission Denied Error

Posted on May 14th, 2019

 

Sometimes, we get the permission denied error while we switched to sudo.

eg: user [~] # su –

-bash: /bin/su : permission denied

On checking the SSH configuration file /etc/ssh/sshd_config, we had found the entry

“PermitRootLogin No”. Also, we try the option “Manage root’s SSH Keys” on the

Home >> Security Center >> Manage root’s SSH Keys. It won’t work since the root login is disabled as well as “su” command is denied for all users by default.

In this case, the “su” belongs to the wheel group and the only option is to adding users to “wheel” group. Hence they can able to use “su” command.

Wheel group is a special user group used on some Unix systems to control access to the su or sudo command, which allows a user to masquerade as another user (usually the superuser). The ‘wheel’ group was used to create a pool of user accounts that were allowed to get that level of access to the server.

We can discuss the steps to resolve the issue by adding the users to the wheel group.

1) Login to WHM.

2) Select the “Security Center” option from the left side.

ssh disabled

 

3) Choose ” Manage Wheel Group Users ” option from the Security Center.

ssh disabled

 

4) Here, you can add the users to the wheel group and also remove the users from the wheel group.

ssh disabled

This group controls which users can use the systems “su” utility.

 

If you need any further help, please do reach our support department.

 

2 Responses to “What If SSH Root Login Disabled and “su” Getting Permission Denied Error”

  1. yea right says:

    this does not match up with your config files at all? where the hell is this security center?

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