On Sun, 9 Jan 2000, Patrick Kirk wrote: > I need to add a second superuser.
No you don't. If you want someone else to have root access, then just give them the root password. If you want someone else to be able to do some root tasks but not really be root, you have two choices. 1) Make the program setuid root. 2) Use sudo. Neither of these options is especially secure, but they're better than nothing. If you put another user with UID 0 in /etc/passwd then that login will also be root, it will just have another name. This will confuse some things and accomplish nothing as it will provide no security benefit. Just give them the root password. If you are trying to get around some various restriction on root (for example, the prohibition on logging in via telnet) then you can add as many superusers as you like, the restrictions will apply to them all. If you really want to get around them, then you should configure the program in question to stop enforcing those restrictions.
