On 25/06/15 15:37, The Wanderer wrote:
What happens if you try to log in as root, or to 'go root' (by e.g. running 'su' in a terminal)? Does it error out directly, or can you log in as root by pressing Enter without typing anything (i.e., giving a blank password)? The former would be (as previously mentioned) a crazy system design, and the latter would be a fairly serious security issue IMO - even for a system intended to be used by only one person.
The usual architecture of "no root password" is, as I understand it, "root's entry in the password database contains a value which cannot possibly be the hash of a password", meaning that you can't directly log in as root.
This is usually coupled to the first normal user account created being given a very generous entry in /etc/sudoers.