[PATCH] su: support denying accounts with blank password

[Jody Bruchon]

On 10/1/2015 2:42 PM, Alain Mouette wrote:
> Why would you want to completely disable root login?
>
> If it is a security feature, how can it be used? It can be interesting
> to avoid escalating priviledges, but then how to to administrative
> tasks? (assuming ssh root login is disabled too)

Ubuntu disables root logins via both 'login' and 'su' and forces the use 
of 'sudo' to run things as root. I assume that this is what people want 
to exclusively use for privilege escalation when suggesting this feature.

In my case, I have a Linux "rescue" platform which has a blank root 
password because it's unnecessary to force the user to type one in and 
the entire system is designed to run temporarily out of a tmpfs. In my 
case, whether this affects 'su' or 'login', it would be a bug, not a 
feature. As long as it is an optional behavior that I can disable with 
no side effects, I see no reason to argue with making such a feature 
available.

Jody Bruchon