sudo, not su.

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

elw at stderr.org wrote:
>> I'd like to draw devel@'s attention to trac bug 5537, which might land
>> sometime soon:
>>   http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5537
>> The upshot would be that, instead of logging in directly as root with
>> no password, you would log in directly as *olpc* with no password, and
>> then sudo to root (if you need root).  Please comment in the bug if
>> you have strong objections and/or be prepared to try logging in as
>> 'olpc' if 'root' seems to stop working in a new build.
> 
> +1
> 
> Yes, I think logging in directly as root is a misfeature that should go 
> away.  Most of the other unix-derived platforms have been doing their best 
> to kill it off or at least reduce its attractiveness... and being able to 
> sudo is usually pretty trivial.
> 
> --elijah
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> 

Yeah ... sudo is more secure than su. In fact, some systems, for 
example, the Gentoo LiveCD, scrambles the root password. So you have to do

$ sudo su -

and then set a password to ssh in as root.