On Thu, 24 Nov 2005, Björn Lindström wrote:
passwd -l simply sets the password to a value matching no passwords. sudo works by running SUID root, and so does not depend on a root password in any way.
Actually that depends on how sudo is configured. In some configurations sudo does depend on the root password (rather than the user a/c password) for authentication.
Anyone wanting to lock the root account (not a good idea IMHO) should have a root enabled session (sudo, su or whatever) put to the side and not touched during the procedure. This session would be used only to reverse the procedure if it was found that establishing superuser privs was no longer possible in new sessions.
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