How to permit SSH root Login in Ubuntu 18.04

SSH root login is disabled by default in Ubuntu 18.04. SSH server for Ubuntu provides by the openssh-server package and root login is controlled by the PermitRootLogin directive in the OpenSSH server configuration (sshd_config file):

You can check the current status by running the following command:

grep -i "rootlogin" /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Root login is disabled, if the PermitRootLogin directive is commented out (# in front) or its value is not set to yes.

If you want to enable ssh root login, do the following steps with root privileges:

Open the /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
```
vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
```
Uncomment the line PermitRootLogin and set the value to yes:
```
PermitRootLogin yes
```
To make the new setting take effect, restart the ssh server:
```
systemctl restart sshd.service
```

Now that we have enabled ssh root login, you can try ssh using the root user from a remote computer:

ssh root@192.168.1.100

Note that Ubuntu root account does not have a password by default. So if you want to log in to root ssh account, first you muse have set a password for the root user.

Allowing the root user to login over SSH is a not a good idea. we don’t need to login as root to get root privileges. You can ssh to your Ubuntu server using a user who has sudo privileges, then switch to the root user account using sudo -i command.

Next: Change Ubuntu SSH Port