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I am trying to disable root login. I set PermitRootLogin no in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.
When I run ssh root@IP, I get Permission denied, please try again. which is correct.
When I login into root using su - command from another user, I still see XXXXX number of failed login attempts.
Is this normal or did I forgot about something?
I am running CentOS 7.
Is this normal or did I forgot about something? I am running centos 7.
Yes, it is normal and expected behavior. Failed attempts are always logged and if the root is not allowed to login, every attempt though ssh fails.
You can disable the root account with sudo passwd -l root. Editing the sshd_config file affects ssh logins only. This disables su - as well since the password is not known by anyone.
from man passwd:
-l, --lock Lock the password of the named account. This option disables a password by changing it to a value which matches no possible encrypted value (it adds a ´!´ at the beginning of the password).
Note that this does not disable the account. The user may still be able to login using another authentication token (e.g. an SSH key). To disable the account, administrators should use usermod --expiredate 1 (this set the account's expire date to Jan 2, 1970).
Users with a locked password are not allowed to change their password.
