How to enable ssh root access ubuntu 16.04

Question

on Ubuntu 16.04

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

1. change

   PermitRootLogin prohibit-password 
   

   to

   PermitRootLogin yes 
   

2. sudo service ssh restart

still permission denied

Solution

on Ubuntu 16.04

1. ensure you have openssh-server server installed sudo apt-get install openssh-server

   sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

   1. change

      PermitRootLogin prohibit-password

   to

   PermitRootLogin yes 
   

   or sudo sed -i 's/prohibit-password/yes/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config

   2. in order to PAM authentication add

      AllowUsers root

   or sudo echo "AllowUsers root" >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config

   3. sudo service ssh restart

works fine

in order you don't know your root password set new with privileged user

sudo passwd root

and you may want to get rid of password prompt in safe way what may be useful approach for sth like rsync, ansible and so on, so probably

from where ever you want to connect

ssh-keygen; ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub root@YOURHOST

enter the root pass you have just set and DONE

ssh root@YOURHOST

Comments

[SDsolar]

16.04 Mine does not have this line. Simply adding it and restarting the service still doesn't make it work.